Messing About On The River

I've had a lovely day today.  Most of the time when I book a day off work, it's to do housework or something else domestic, but this year I promised Sam and Eleanor I'd try to take more time off to spend with them on school trips.  This has meant working quite late some evenings to work up the flexi for the days off, but it's been worth it to just spend time with each of them.

There seems to be something really special about having your Mum come along on a school trip.  Eleanor thoroughly enjoyed having me come along and leading her group.

Today we visited the Henley River and Rowing Museum.  It was a beautiful day, great bunch of kids, river ride up and back through the lock and a visit to the Wind In The Willows exhibition.  The River Thames is stunning.  I realised today I need to take the kids to more places like this - we live by some beautiful river areas and locks.  As a kid I used to spend a lot of time at Boulters Lock in Maidenhead, where I grew up.  I would cycle to see my best friend in Cookham every week and we'd swim across the river there and I used to canoe at Hurley sometimes too.

The Party To Make Up For Parties

Maddie has missed out on many birthday parties, purely because her birthday lies in the summer holidays.  Sharing the same day as her I remember from my childhood, all my friends having parties, sleepovers and fun days, but when it came to my birthday nobody was around, mainly because they were away on family holidays or my family was away on holiday.  I got used to having quiet birthdays, but despite this my Mum and Dad always made sure I had a good day, making a fuss of me and getting me nice presents.

Maddie mentioned last year that she hadn't really had a proper party for her birthday.  Over the years she's been very gracious about this, has never moaned or complained and never asked for anything the others had.  She's seen them have laser quest parties, bowling parties, sports parties, swimming evenings, pizza building parties, gym parties, indoor activity parties, discos,  .....  but Maddie's days were quiet, like mine had been.  So, this year, for her 11th birthday, we decided to have a party to make up for parties, inviting the friends she felt closest too and the friends she wanted to get to know better in the future.

The only obstacle that faced us, was it being in the holidays, friends being on holiday and this year, herself being away at a Church camp on her birthday.  So her celebrations have spanned nearly two weeks!  A few presents opened before she went away, a cake and shoebox stuffed with small goodies smuggled to camp in her leader's car as a surprise for her birthday morning and a party and sleepover the weekend after.

Maddie has the most fabulous group of friends.  Sadly, not all of them could make it, but she had a great crowd at her Water Walkerz party last night. As well as asking her older brother at the last minute if he'd like to come and bring a friend, which meant a quick phone call to another friend, the group was made up of a neighbour, Brownies pal, school friends and church friends.  Girls who had never met each other before, but who got together to have a great 2 hours of fun, water zorbing, sliding the chutes, playing volleyball with the lifeguard and munching on the poolside buffet.  They even did a fantastic job of singing Happy Birthday to Maddie so loud, they drowned out the sound system!

Four friends came home afterwards, two went home at 10.30pm and the other two stayed over for the night, finally drifting off to sleep some time after 3.30 this morning.  Filled up with pizza and midnight munchies, the girls still managed to fit in a breakfast of sausage, eggs and bacon.  It was a real shame to have to send everybody home, but Maddie has had a great time.

A Splash Of Memories

Us parents have to constantly judge whether it's right to become stressed about something when teaching our kids.  Some days things bother us more than others.  Some days we worry too much about what other people are thinking or saying.  Some days we don't realise that when we say 'no', it's not because it does our kids any harm, but more because we can't be bothered dealing with the things that follow.

So, occasionally, I dig out these photos below and remind myself that some days I can just say 'yes'.  Like this day in July 2007 when coming home on the last day of the school term, the local area flooded.  We were faced with this and the only choice we had was to go through it and get extremely wet, or trudge the long way round.  Maddie and Joshua had a schoolfriend coming home for tea and after much begging on their part, followed by a quick mobile call to their friend's Mum, the go-ahead was given for them to dive in and 'swim' in the field on the way home.  

They had such fantastic fun coming home that day.  Admittedly, had it been the day before, they would have probably had to walk the long way round. But occasionally us parents need to chill, to stand back and just let our kids be kids and let them do those mad little things, that ordinarily we'd never dream of letting them do. 

So, if you're a parent, let go once in a while, let the kids do something a little wacky - as long as they're safe, no offence is caused to other people and nothing gets damaged, ask yourself where the harm is?  If there isn't any, give them those precious moments to dive in and swim.

Happy Exhaustion

 

Andy and I have four happy exhausted children today.  The younger two are in bed after having an absolute blast of a day at the South Reading Churches Fun Day, followed by a first birthday party for a dear little boy in our church.  And for Sam an extended day involving a much longed for trip to Toys R Us early this evening to spend birthday money.

The older two are collapsed on the sofa vegging in front of the television having enjoyed a great day out in the fresh air just being kids and enjoying a bit of freedom and independence.  They're about to head up the wooden hill.

Me and Andy?  A lovely cool refreshing beer each, feet up and DVD.

All's good in the house :-)