Orienteering, no list, and homework.

1) A is happy and excited as he tells me about his current PE lessons – they have just started doing orienteering. I had the opportunity to watch the class briefly this morning, as they ran from place to place around the playground. It looked like lots of fun!

2) I arrive at the supermarket, but realise that I don’t have the list. I try to call K to see if he knows (given he’d started the new list), but he doesn’t answer my call. I go in anyway and enjoy planning several meals as I go along. Anything I don’t get will just have to wait until next time.

3) The quiet of the house as both kids sit at the dining room table engrossed in their homework. I reflect on how nice it is that neither child require me to assist with homework the whole time anymore.  A while later, M needs me to listen to her reading, and A needs help putting his wordsearch together on the computer, and I reflect on how nice it is to be needed 🙂 .

Not so long, spring, and sunny drive.

1) If I had just been there to buy it for myself, I would have walked away. As it was, I took a deep breath and joined the queue which curled its way around the shop and out of the door, and prepared myself for a length wait. However, no more than a couple of minutes later, the queue suddenly shifted and I realised that there was an “express kiosk” selling precisely what I was there to buy, and only one person ahead of me 🙂 .

2) Today the kids are celebrating that it is the “first day of spring” (when one defines Spring by a date, rather than the garden!).

DSCF0338Megan’s Daffodil

3) We’re off to Inverness in an hour or two, and the drive from here to there will be glorious on this beautiful sunny afternoon.

A short walk, a longer walk, and tea.

1) To realise I can buy the item I need with a short and sunny walk along the High Street in the town that I am visiting, rather than driving to the next town, paying to park the car, and then walking to the shop there.

2) At lunchtime, my friend calls… “I’m giving in to temptation, can we go for that walk after all?”.  We enjoy a brisk one hour walk, then go our separate ways back to the things we should be doing on this sunny afternoon.

3) I come home tired from the meeting, to be greeted at the door by K with a hot cup of tea.

At home, on my own, and yummy snack.

1) Not having to get up for school this morning, and watching the snow drift steadily down, we decided to have an at-home morning today. M stayed in her pajamas until nearly lunchtime, A relaxed on the sofa with his knitting, and I enjoyed relaxing and chatting with my kids.

2) After dropping the kids home to K, I went back out to the supermarket and enjoyed a solitary wander around, picking up the few bits and pieces we needed.

3) Cheese and Chive oatbakes, with caramelised onion chutney, courtesy of graze…  Thank you very much to my lovely sister and her family for such a fab Christmas pressie!

Snow, bless you, and warm.

1) As I drive east, I find the snow. (We seem to be in one of the few areas of the country not to be hit by snow in the last week or so.) It caps the hills, carpets the grass, and turns the world into a winter wonderland.

2) I sneeze just as I walk past a couple of ladies in the shop (the cold I’ve been fighting for several days has got the upper hand today 🙁 ). “Bless you”, they say.  I smile, and thank them. It didn’t alter the progression of the cold, but it made me feel better 🙂 .

3) The comforting warmth of a hot wheatie.

Progress, break, and happy girl.

1) My physio was very happy with my progress, and I’ve graduated to a stronger elastic band with which to do my exercises 🙂 .

2) I had quite a few errands to run in town today. It was getting close to lunchtime, and I had been on my feet all morning. So, I found myself a corner in a coffee shop, and sat down gratefully with a cup of hot tea and a new knitting magazine.

3) On my list of things to buy had been some new hairbands for M.  She received her new ones so excitedly, and threw her arms around my neck to give me a great big cuddle of thanks.

Hats, lunch, and shopping.

1) Hard at work the workmen, in their fluorescent jackets, have accessorised their outfits with Santa hats 🙂 .

2) At the end of our annual shopping expedition, Dad and I enjoy eating lunch together. Across the way, I notice a little girl eating spaghetti with her fingers. Opposite, is her daddy. They look like they are having lots of fun and I find myself hoping that maybe, like us, they’ll be still doing the same in a couple of decades time (although, perhaps she’ll have figured out how to eat her spaghetti with cutlery by then!).

3) We have a highly successful shopping trip, even though it included a bunch of stuff that we hadn’t gone for (although it was for my brother, so it wasn’t as bad as it sounds).

Phsyio, can we help? and pizza.

1) The physio worked hard on my neck and shoulder which was pretty sore at times, but by the end of the session I could definitely move more freely.  What’s scary is that I hadn’t really realised how “stuck” (to use the physio’s description) my neck has been…

2) I walked into the shop and two assistants immediately sprang to attention: “Can we help?”.  I told them what I was looking for, they took me to it, I bought it, and was on my way back to the car, all within the space of about three minutes.

3) A came home from school excited having been on a school trip to Frankie and Benny’s, where they made their own pizza, and then ate it for lunch.

It’s okay, breathe easy, and safe.

1) The house key is in the door and I’m outside de-icing the car.  M comes out shuts the door, and brings me the key. I take the key, we jump in the car and off we go 🙂 . Two hours later I return, put the key in the door, and realise that the door had been closed, but was unlocked*. Once again, I’m grateful that we live in a fairly safe neighbourhood!

2) When I head up to school at lunchtime, I can’t find my bag.  I don’t worry too much, reassuring myself that I must have put in down in an unusual place when I returned to the house earlier (cf 1)). Four hours later, I return… I look for my bag. And I can’t find it. I look some more, and I still can’t find it.  And I look still more, and I still can’t find it.  Did it somehow fall out the car in the shopping centre carpark this morning? Surely I would have noticed? I check the car for the third time.  And I find my bag.

3) I spend the afternoon in school helping to set up for tomrrow’s Christmas Fayre.  M’s teacher personally escorts her to the school hall and brings her to me. A little later, one of the playground assistants tells me that she’d been watching A as he left the school at lunchtime to come out to the car (he was coming home for lunch).  I’m so grateful for the diligence of the staff at the school, that they know my children, they know me, and they make sure my kids are safe 🙂 .

* Lessons in how to lock up the house properly commence tomorrow!!

** I’m seriously contemplating putting a fluorsecent stripe down the side – a small black bag is far too easy to lose!

No rain, beautiful view, and got it after all.

1) It didn’t rain today. At all. 🙂

2) The kids enthused about the view they saw from the school stairwell this afternoon… I’ve been up there before so I could imagine what it would be like – the school sits on a hill, with an incredible view across the valley. On a clear day like today, it would have been beautiful.  Most of the hills were autumn-brown, but the highest peak (Ben Cleuch) was snow-capped.

3) I returned an item I’d bought online to the shop, because it just didn’t fit nicely.  I had wanted to try a different size, but they were out of stock online. So I returned the item, and was about to leave the shop when I noticed a rack of them hanging up…  I tried one on, and it fit perfectly 🙂 .