We made it! It’s half term and I think we are all ready for it. The boys survived the last week of term without any drama though, apart from having to start wearing their new school shoes and Gabe complaining that his ‘felt funny’!

We had parents’ evening for both boys on Thursday and it was lovely to hear that they’re both doing really well at school. Gabe is flying academically according to his teacher – he just needs to keep working on his independence and resilience, but that didn’t come as any surprise!

And Toby is doing great too. He’s really improved his organisation and focus in the last few months which was great to hear. He’s so bright but does get easily distracted or is slow to get going with a task sometimes. It’s something he is aware of though, and he’s clearly been working hard to improve which is all we can ask for really.

We’ve been lucky here that both the recent storms haven’t caused us any problems really. We’ve had a lot of rain and the stream at the bottom of our garden was very high, and did overflow into the garden a bit. Our house is probably three metres higher than the stream though so there’s no danger of it actually flooding.

All the wind and rain has meant another weekend in the house though. We went to swimming lessons on Saturday where I took this picture of Gabe wrapped up in this dinosaur towel (it’s a Cuddledry one we were given to review a few years ago and it’s still going strong).

I told the boys a few weeks ago that getting them dressed after swimming was the worst part of my weekend because they always ended up fighting or moaning about something. Since then they’ve been a lot better so long may it continue!

Both boys have really been enjoying their Lego this week. They got a big box of mixed bricks for Christmas, along with a book full of ideas of things to build and they’ve made all sorts this week.

Toby was super proud of his notebook, pencil, rubber and sharpener! And I was pretty impressed too!

We’re not going away this half term so I need to come up with a few different things to entertain the boys , otherwise they’ll just default to wanting the PlayStation all the time. We’ve got a few plans to meet up with friends, and to go to my mum and dad’s, and I think we’ll go to the library one day. I’ve promised them they can do some painting too, which is one of my least favourite activities, so we’ll see how that goes!

Oh, and next Saturday we’ve planned a day out in Manchester to visit a Lego exhibition, and a trip to the Museum of Science and Industry too.

Have you got any exciting plans for half term?

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.