School holidays

Tonight all the children were asleep by 630pm. It's been a big two weeks! Last night all children were involved in sleepovers, with school friends or cousins, so there were a few late nights. Ryan deserves special mention, for apparently waking up at 1230 and playing Wii with his friend until 530, when I woke up and told them it was too early to get up and to go back to bed. They did go back to bed fortunately but were totally wiped by tonight. He also managed to lose his loose tooth tonight - it's only been loose for a couple of days but he worried at it so much that it's already out, most of the root intact. So different to Bethany, who will just ignore the loose tooth for weeks until it falls out of its own accord.
We did lots of stuff these holidays. Celebrated Ella's birthday, including a visit to a new playhouse cafe in Salisbury which everyone enjoyed.


Photo: Lucy having a ball. Geddit? I'm so funny.


Photo: Hard to see, but at the front table, no 29, Ryan, Nicole and Hannah are reading. It's a play cafe guys! You're supposed to PLAY not read!


Photo: Just Bethany doing her thing.

We had Michael visit from Melbourne again which is always a lot of fun. He even cooked dinner (those photos will be appearing on Facebook).


Photo: Sophie and Michael in funny-face mode post dinner cooking

We went rollerskating, cleverly planning for mum and Michael to come with us, so they could help the kids and Nicole and I could just skate like we were cool again.


Photo: Bethany rollerskating

We met my friend Karena in Adelaide for great Greek lunch and saw a Japanese anime which was very good. There was only one slight problem when we sat down to watch and the movie started. In Japanese. Subtitled fortunately but still made it rather boring for poor Hannah and Sophie. I didn't get to see all the movie but I now am quite familiar with the toilets and corridor of the Palace Cinema.
The kids had a cooking class at Regency TAFE. Nicole and I stayed and helped with the younger ones, but Ryan and Bethany were in a longer class with no parents. They really really enjoyed it - they felt so grown up that they got to fry chicken and various other things to do with high temperatures. And the food they made was yummy.
Ryan attended a cartooning workshop at the library, while the girls and I hung out and read books for an hour and a half (a real chore, that).
We went swimming too, at Starplex, where the pool is heated to about 60 degrees (or at least it feels like that!). Just the thing for a freezing cold day. It was good prep for Sophie too, who starts swimming lessons this term. She is sometimes unexpectedly timid, so I'm not sure whether she'll be too scared to get much out of her lessons. But she got very comfortable in the water, even putting her head under a few times.
So it seems like we had busy holidays, but we did have down time too. We managed to fit in much playing of Sims 2 and the Wii, including the newest game, Rayman Raving Rabbits (thanks Mikey, best houseguest ever!), plenty of jumping on the trampoline, and various other fun things. Oh, and also digging a trench, so the pipe that sprung a huge hole could get dug out and replaced. Hooray for friendly plumber neighbours.

I love school holidays. Tomorrow, it's up early, making lunches, getting everyone organised, rushing to school, every day, for another ten weeks... sigh