Bye Bye

With Ella starting preschool this year, it is time for our 4th child to leave home. Busy Lizzy (aka the craft nanny) will be looking after the children for the last time on Friday. Lizzy has been with us for 3 1/2 years. While she has been with us Lizzy has given us a taste of things to come in 15 years time. Lizzy is studying part time at university and Sarah has been helping her with essays and assignments. Lizzy sleeps over occasionally and we worry when she goes out and isn't home by the time we go to sleep at 9:30PM. Hopefully we will be staying up later when the kids are older so they don't have a 9:15 curfew.
The children will all miss Lizzy terribly. They all love:

• the shopping trips to toys r us where they plan their birthday and christmas present lists
• the fantastic chicken schnitzel dinners
• the coffee shop trips for the baby cinos and cookies
  
• the painting and other craft activities. Whenever the children get a craft present, we say "you can do that with Lizzy"
• the fun times.

Sarah and Michael will miss:

• the ironing and the washing
• the clean house
  
• the chicken schnitzel dinners
• having time off, knowing the kids are being looked after so well.

Goodbye and thank you Lizzy.

The first day of the rest of my life

Last week, preschool started. This year Ella is joining her brother at Children's Cottage. This Wednesday Simon is starting school. Ever since I started working 4 days a week (4 years ago) I have been dreaming of the day when all three of them are in school and I'll get a few hours to myself. Poor Sarah will have to wait another two years for this to happen to her. Although I am swapping my first day off with Sarah just to give her a taste.

I know you are not really interested in my ramblings, what you really want to know is how did Ella go. Did she cope at preschool? Did the preschool cope with Ella. Well everyone was happy. On the first day she stayed to 12:30 and on the second day after telling Sarah to go in the morning, Ella and Ben stayed until 2:30 and the teachers even got Ella to have a sleep. Hopefully things will continue on like this.

Working together

Whenever Sarah is baking in the kitchen, Ella likes to lend a hand. Mainly because there may be the chance to lick the spoon. Since it is summer at the moment, the idea is that you do the baking in your swimming costume so you can jump into the pool while the biscuits are in the oven.






Producing this blog takes a lot of effort so I have started training Simon in the fine art of blog writing. Although he does use the computer, he seems to spend most of his time playing online games rather than writing insightful and funny blog articles.

There were three in the bed, then.....

Another wacky sleepover story.
Last night was meant to be the night! The night - you know what I mean - the night that all three children slept somewhere else and we had a night off. All three were going to spend the night at grandma's flat. Everything was going well, we dropped them off, got their dinner organised, gave grandma a long list of instructions (bringing up six children and looking after numerous grand children, would not prepare you for looking after our three wonders).

As soon as they were settled in we dashed off and had an early dinner and then headed home for some hard core Wii action and a DVD. We were too exhausted from the weeks activity to contemplate a late night.

Just as Sarah placed the Wii remote on her wrist for a another tennis marathon, the phone rang. Grandma was ringing to say Ben wanted to come home, it was about 7:45. We were fine about that. Ben did the same thing when he first went to a sleep over at Grannies. Sarah returned about 30 minutes later with a very tired Ben and Ella. Ella had also decided that she wanted to come home when Sarah arrived to pick up Ben. Once these two were put to bed, we settled down on the couch to watch the DVD.

Just as we started watching the phone rang again, Gandma was bringing Simon home, he was missing Ben - Who would have known those children were so close to each other! They are arguing about some silly toy as I am writing this entry. More likely Simon thought he was missing out on something at home. We had a quick chat with Simon but failed to convince him to stay there for the night. Sarah couldn't face another trip across the bridge that night so Grandma kindly returned him to us. Poor grandma got breathtested without her license on the way back - luckily she was let off.

So after such a promising start we had all three back with us. The only plus side was that the boys slept in until 6:15 and Ella slept till 7:15. It is now 8:15 and they are all busy arguing - situation normal.

Wish us better luck for next time.

Having a lovely summer.

Wow what a start to the new year!

Yesterday they all slept in till 6:15 AM

Today no one made any noise until 6:30 AM

What more can you say.