Our first week of the October/Spring school holidays and the boys and I shifted into relaxation mode very quickly. I tackled some big organisation jobs first off, making sure their term review was written up, and then doing a skeleton term plan for each boy as well. This should make weekends run more smoothly for the remainder of the year as I won't have to spend a majority of each Saturday trying to plan for the coming week over the noise of their computer gaming sessions. My other reason for tackling these "paperwork" jobs this week is so that I can relax and enjoy week two of our holidays. I have already promised Munchkin that I will play some board games and card games with him... but I'm hoping for some extra reading time as well.
Sunday night the boys played a few rounds of the card game "Rat-a-Tat-Cat" before Munchkin's bedtime.
Monday afternoon hubby worked hard fixing a loose leg on the dining table and also shampooing the throw rug we keep on the dining room floor as well, so Munchkin had fun building a huge fort with all the chairs and our assortment of blankets that live in the lounge room through the cooler months of the year.
The biggest surprise was a phone call from the library Monday afternoon letting me know that they were open for strict click and collect and would I like to come to the library straight away to pick up all our books that had been sitting on the reserve shelf for 12 long weeks. I nearly cried when I was speaking to the librarian and immediately packed up to go. I loaded the pram with all the books we had on our shelves that were WELL past overdue and took off...
The "click and collect" system works perfectly given how our library is set up. You can't see it in the top photo of the library, but on the left of the photo is the main door which opens into a foyer. Here the 24 hour return chute is on the right and there is a second door leading into the actual building. The librarians now keep the inner door locked and they have set up a small table on the left hand side of the foyer. So during your 10 minute appointment time, you enter the foyer, scan the QR code with the app on your phone, return any books in the chute, then pick up all your books from the table which have already been checked out for you, and leave the library, checking out on phone app as you go. As you can see from the photo on the right, we have a good start on books now. However, I came home and immediately put another 60 books on reserve (you can have 10 reserved items on each card as a maximum) reserving anything and everything I could possibly think of that we would need for Term 4. I am determined NOT to be caught out again should something go wrong as we unlock from this LONG period of restrictions, and the library has to close again. I have a standing Monday appointment each week to pick up any books that we reserve. Just another little bit of normal returning to our lives!!
I definitely got my walking in for the day on Monday. Early in the morning I had been up to our shopping centre for our weekly groceries, then I made a second trip up as I had forgotten to pick up some things from the Indian Foods shop, and THEN I walked to the library and back!!
Monkey and Munchkin enjoyed a game of Guess Who. The game is slightly broken in that the two sides don't clip together anymore, but the boys like it as it means they can sit in more comfortable places and still play the game.
Munchkin and I went for a couple of walks together through the week but I relaxed the exercise rule a bit this week and didn't require daily exercise...
More board game fun... the boys enjoyed playing several games together this week.
You always know the weather is warming up when the lizards start re-appearing. The little skinks are always first, but we anxiously await the return of our resident Blue Tongue Lizards. This beautiful guy is missing a good portion of his tail and he is very wary of us, but if we walk slowly and are quiet, we can admire him while he basks in the sun...
Saturday the boys enjoyed another gaming session with their friends. Usually they only hold these one Saturday a month, but the previous week didn't go well, so we tweaked things a bit and they got a second chance... which was MUCH more successful.
My husband was home for this week's online gaming session, so I put him in charge and I went out for a long, solitary walk. By the time I got home, the gaming session was nearly over, and I had hit my bonus goal of 10 000 steps for the day. My set goal on the app is 8000 steps and I average about 6000 steps per day.
Just a quick photo of my giant "plan the term" session that I did this week. It took a full three days, which is about two days more than it should have taken, but at least the job is done.
The boys thoroughly enjoyed reading NEW books this week... mind you... these are all books they've read numerous times before... but this selection was meant for the July school holidays so they were excited to finally have them for their October school holidays.
I finished reading this aloud to Monster. I hadn't read it since college and it was certainly another interesting perspective to read it while we have been in lockdown.
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