Run of the mill excitement.

We've been on holiday. Actually, the twins and Packrat have been on holiday. I've been running around like a headless chicken, trying to keep the children entertained while still keeping up my regular work schedule. It has been downright exhausting. It has got to be some sort of irony that it is the week of the holiday and I have gotten much less sleep, gotten no rest at all and am falling asleep every time I sit down.

That said, there was much fun to be had over the week. Here are 7 highlights of the fun things we did over the week.

1. Jordan's ballet classes.
It doesn't sound very fun but it was for her. Every day, for an hour, Jordan would go for coaching classes for her upcoming ballet exam. Why is a four year old taking a ballet exam? No, it didn't have anything to do with me being an Amy Chua Tiger Mom. It had to with her ballet teacher saying that Jordan was a performer and she would actually enjoy the 'performance' of the exam. So, it was exhausting for us to have to get her there every morning by 9 but she was always full of chatter and telling us how well she did that at the end of it, we didn't mind.
























2. Going to the movies.
Despite my strong objections to them watching a whole lot of television, they do so. And they've watched full length animated movies at home. That's their Saturday entertainment while I am at work. With the Lorax in the theatres and them being familiar with the story, we decided that it would be their first movie outing. Both sat still, stole our pop corn and had a royal time.























Evan attempting to draw the Truffala tree from the movie. We used it as an abject lesson on why they shouldn't waste paper; because then the Truffala trees would have to be cut down.


3. Playing dress up.

We have a neighbour with a daughter the twins' age. They play a lot. They are often over at our neighbour's house. The toys are often greener at someone else's home. Jordan comes home wearing this one day. A green party dress that had layers and layers of tulle underneath. It gave me a heart attack and had many people talking about how Jordan was going to stress out her father as a teen. Her father's retort was that the two boys will be trained in the art of using the shot gun and the sniper rifle.

























4. Family outings.
Even though Muffin still had school to attend, we kept him out of school for a day so that we could all go out. And we ended up going to the airport. Just having lunch, taking the sky trains and settling down to have tea took 5 hours. The highlight for us was watching Evan drink his ice cream down instead of eating it with a spoon. They were nice and exhausted after that leaving Packrat and I enough time to go for a run.






















5. Making their own lunch
Even though they haven't done much cooking in school since childcare days, the twins remember quite fondly the cooking and have been itching to be in the kitchen again. Finally with time on our hands and no where to rush to, they make their own pizza. Meat sauce, ham, sliced mushroom and cheese all laid out for them to spread on their own personal pizzas. There was a lot of stealing of toppings while it was made and multiple trips to the oven and squeals as the cheese bubbled and melted.




















6. Going to the park

Our perennial favourite is to go to the park. Fresh air, open space and all sorts of things to discover. They found a spider larger than my hand, they discovered hanging roots, saw squirrels and played with dogs. They watched in amazement as a Golden Retriever headed for the stream they were at, waded right in and just luxuriated in the running water. Then they squealed in delight when it came back out and shook itself out in front of them, sending a rain of dog smelling water pellets their direction. Everyone they met that day heard about the dog that wet them.




















7. Cat hunting

We don't mean it in a cruel way. All three kids love animals and love the cats in our estate. Muffin the most. He is fearless and would squat down to stroke the cats and tickle their bellies. My fear is that the cat swipes him. Anyway, one day, in a bid to keep him awake and starve him of his nap so that he would sleep early (we had a dinner to go to), we took them all down to look for cats. We found 3. All 3 ran away because the kids, while meaning no harm were very loud and excitable and scared the beejeezus out of them felines. Evan now tells everyone that they are noisy children and the cats are scared of them. Strange that he knows but it hasn't made him speak at a lower volume!


















The rest of the time, they just spent watching television, especially when Mommy needed a bit of space and quiet. After a full 10 days of the 3 children; of which some days I went it alone because Packrat was away, television time was welcomed by all.



















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