After our holiday two weeks ago we had a quieter week at home last week with a mixture of days at home and a few activities out of the house. To be honest the boys would quite happily just stay at home the whole time if they were allowed to just watch TV and play video games all the time but I do like to get them to do other things every once in a while!

At the start of the week we went to soft play – there’s a lovely one not too far from us that I used to take Gabe to every week when he was in pre-school. It’s definitely much easier these days though – we were there for about an hour and a half and I only saw the boys a couple of times when they came back to the table for a drink! I think Toby is going to be too tall for most soft play soon though so I don’t think we’ll be able to go for much longer.

Our second activity was swimming – there’s a local private pool that you can hire for an hour. We went along with a couple of the boys friends from school and had a great time. Although the boys have been having swimming lessons for quite a long time now they don’t often get chance just to play in a pool. I really think it does help them with their confidence in the water so I’m going to try and make an effort to take them more often.

The last thing out of the house last week was a full day Street Monkeys summer camp. I’m not entirely sure what the boys got up to all day – apparently there were Nerf wars and playing on an Xbox as well as some of their usual jumping off stuff and over things. Toby and Gabe loved it though – so much so they’re going back for another day this week!

As I mentioned last week I was away in the Lake District this weekend – and as much as I love my family it was lovely to get away by myself for a few days! Despite all the things we got up last week though I didn’t actually manage to take any pictures of the boys, so the photos in this post were just taken at home. Of course they couldn’t just let me have a sensible picture – they always have to be daft whenever the camera comes out!

That’s all for this week. It’s finally Gabe’s birthday tomorrow – with him getting some presents on Toby’s birthday and then them having the joint party last month it feels like his birthday has been going on for weeks! I’m taking the boys to a trampoline park and then for a McDonald’s as a birthday treat so hopefully he’ll have a good day and the birthday celebrations will finally be complete!

This is my ninth year taking part in this linky celebrating childhood, based on a poem by Kahlil Gibran, “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth” .

If you’d like to see the rest of my Living Arrows posts you can find them all here.