The First Day Of The Rest Of The Holidays

Posted by Jacq in Blog, Family Life | 5 comments

Our school broke up yesterday. Only the teachers will go to school today and tomorrow. I’m not entirely clear about what they get up to on INSET days but I like to think that they are running down the halls, shouting in the classrooms and using the computers to cause trouble on Mumsnet.

On Thursday night we had a lot of fun making these ‘gold at the end of the rainbow’ jars for the girls’ teachers.

There are chocolate coins at the bottom with layers of different coloured M&Ms and skittles on top. One of the jars has white marshmallows at the top as well.

We then printed out a label that said Thanks For Being Such A Sweet Teacher and the girls drew a picture and signed their names. I figured that even if the teachers didn’t like sweets, they are bound to know someone who does and will have a nice jar to put their tea bags or whatever in when the sweets are gone.

The two older girls took their jars in yesterday, and both arrived intact despite my misgivings. I took DD3′s one in yesterday for the last pick up of the year; I didn’t trust her not to open the jar and share the sweets out in the playground!

So yesterday was the last day of school. It rained on the final school run, of course but it didn’t spoil the traditional last day of  school photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note the umbrella!

So today, we’ve had a lazy day and a slow start. I had to take our old dog up to the Veterinary Hospital for a scan as he’s got terrible diarrhoea at the moment, and we are wondering if he’s got a tumour.

DH had arranged to leave  for work late this morning, so I could drop off the dog without having to uproot the children from their beds.

I drove smugly past the hoards of parents ushering their offspring through the various school gates I passed on the way, and exchanged what I hoped were sympathetic glances with a mum driving the school run. She had three kids in uniform in the back seat eating what looked like dry cheerios out of plastic bags; that’s one way of doing it I suppose! All the while I  imagined that when I returned home my children would be downstairs, dressed and eating breakfast, thanks to DH’s efforts.

I dropped the Old Boy at the clinic and headed home. It was 8:30 am which means rush hour around here. What should have been a 10 minute drive took closer to 30 minutes and I was no longer feeling smug.

When I arrived home, I could hear voices from downstairs so assumed all was well.

Nope.

Instead I found 4 children sitting downstairs in their night clothes, playing on their Nintendos. No one was dressed, teeth and hair were unbrushed and nobody had had breakfast. To say I was unimpressed is a slight understatement.

Unfortunately this has set the tone for the rest of the day. I’m trying to do some work,  make some phone calls and tidy up the house before we go away this weekend. I’m not having much success today.

It took two hours to get everyone dressed and downstairs, and there have been fights and arguments all morning. Now I’ve had to separate DD1 and DD2 during lunch because they can’t seem to coexist peacefully in the same room for even a couple of minutes.

I hope things calm down a little, otherwise it’s going to be a long 7 weeks.