Happyland Vs Errands... arghghghg! don't you just love them...!

You might have guessed that I like to "Rabbit" on,... yes I am a Chatterbox, and have been since I  could talk, and haven't stopped since, (unless I lose my voice!) but now I have our blog! and you could probably tell from the length of the post, when I'm blogging from my i-phone or from the luxury of my keyboard.... Fortunately in my former-life I was a PA so touch typing does have it's uses!

Yesterday while Oatie's daddy and our older two were having their Ski lesson, Oatie and I popped up to town to get my elder two's skates sharpened, Oatie has been drawn to Hockey since we moved here 2.5 years ago, and the old-timers when they see him give Oatie some pucks so he has collection. The skate shop does both Figure and Hockey, and have a Huge TV with either sport on there., yesterday a Hockey game was on and Oatie was shouting Good Job when he saw a goal! The nice man who held the door open for us asked if he played Hockey? (Yep a Dagger through the heart moment, I just said not yet...) and then later the nice man was watching Oatie in the shop looking puzzled... as he could hear that he was intelligent from what he was saying to me, but then looking at his legs...

We had a fast dump of snow so using Oatie's wheels was not an option so I carried Oatie in, he was amazingly good, he knew why we were there and he wants to skate SO bad, and our backyard rink is a right-off this year, it is now 4 feet high of snow! so as it has the  mesh fence around it the snow is trapped.  You can see just the top of our Hockey Goal poking through the snow.  Oatie walked everywhere holding my hands and we looked at bags, to tops to hockey stick to whatever he wanted to look at and my favourite thing he does at the moment is "What's that?"... "What's that?" the game can go on for hours, but he just wants to know what EVERYTHING is and what EVERYTHING is called... and I can't deny him that! so after we announced everything in the shop, he looked at the blade covers and picked out some snakes, I thought he wanted them for himself, but he said NO, for his Brother... and what I loved was he carried them in his not so good hand, dropped them did a full squat, while holding my hand and dropped them and another squat... he was so good.  My kids skating coach gave them a Reddi rink as a treat for being hard workers, so think I'll get that out and maybe Oatie can have some fun on that.

 Today started of how our usual relaxing Sunday's have been our week's usually  fairly action packed so it's nice to have an "unwind" day... but not today, The Elder two had their early morning skate, and Oatie was playing his Happyland... which my older two like to play with him too, we alternate between our Thomas more serious set for half the year, and then Happyland for the other half of the year... set up in our Bonus room.

 I love Happyland, and when my eldest was a baby this toy shop always had a buy two get the 3rd item free so we have a huge set.  Oatie loves playing it, he sets up traffic jams or multiple trains or bath's the characters.

My husband who's the sensible one, reminded us of the impending errands that needed to be done, (my eldest)"oh no! we have to leave the house on a Sunday?"  In-between the questions why you don't get a "Snowbow" when it's snowing and Sunny from my daughter.  I remember the time when even with the three of them, Oatie as a baby, I'd have the double stroller and my eldest holding my hand, and pop by the Supermarket for some bread... or something you fancied for dinner...

 Well now, our shopping / errands are kind of compartmentalised, I have a Super app on my iphone called "pocket informant" it's available on the ipad too I believe, and one of the organising settings you can have a "project" with contexts for tasks, and each context is say a store, so under one project called shopping, I have all the stores, so if we head to town, I can see everything that we need to buy at that store, for me it saves so much time, so efficient and that what we do so we can get our ABR hours in.  Yes, when I see someone with a pint of milk, I do inwardly smile, oh how that was once me...We bunch up the errands and hit them in one go, in a logical circuit.  That way we do that once every 4-6 weeks rather than weekly, you save on the drive there and back and can systematically get through the list fast...as no one is really enjoying it so no one wants to browse and job done....  On the way home we stopped of for a meal treat, one that the kids weren't expecting, yes it was the one with the Golden Arches, say no more, and you can see who LOVES it, the photo at the top.  We don't have that type of food very often, so when we do the kids really enjoy it.

So that's how we deal with errands, bunch them up and get them done.  My husband does the weekly shop on a week-night .

When we got home, my husband bathed the kids and washed their hair and they settled down to watch a film, while mummy made home made snacks for the week+ banana bread, granola bars, chocolate brownies, gingerbread cookies (OK I have a secret addiction for them! well they dunk fabulously in a cup of tea!) and I'm making a Valentine's Cake, I banned my husband from buying me a card and flowers years ago, I'd rather a mug that I can enjoy day in and day out...(let's see if he's reading my blog!!- joke) and will Ice it tomorrow and pop it in the freezer, and I might go all out and pipe some Royal icing flowers which I'll make and store and then assemble the day before.  Oh and my darling husband did Oatie's Neck ABR exercises while I was baking.

Oatie's up to 15 flashcard words, today we added 'Flower', today we combined two of his flashcards and he was delighted when he read them... it was "red car".  Just before Bed I put on on Oatie's favourite Tune of the week which is Black Eyed Peas "Meet me Halfway" and he stood up in open space and bopped for almost a minute before diving on the beanbag.

Well I would have rather been at home playing Happyland, but at least the errands are done till the end of Feb lol!