Two more sleeps...

...till the kids are back at school.

I'm not sure I'm ready for everything to start up again, I've been filling in the calendar with all the after school activities and realising that there's a reason I end up slightly frazzled during term time. Caitlin has signed up for 3 dance classes and will be continuing with her singing lessons, Tom is planning on doing karate twice a week, continuing his drama classes and taking up flute lessons in order to play in the school band, David will hopefully continue with sword classes, Adam is doing a pottery course this term, might be taking his mum to French lessons and will do sword with David. Adam's mum will join us for dinner once a week and my Dad will be coming for a meal twice a week.

I will be huddled over here in the corner gibbering slightly.

It's possible I may end up culling some of those activities, we'll see how things go.

We did end up going to the beach, but it was Monday rather than Sunday. We took Adam's mum with us and met up with Adam's brother and family at Terrigal on the Central Coast north of Sydney - about an hours drive from our place.

We set up camp under one of the big pine trees that line the concourse behind the beach, forays to the water were made, fish and chips lunch was consumed, books were read, conversations were had and seagulls were foiled by the hiding of food inside the picnic basket. They were so disappointed, I could practically hear them thinking "But you aren't eating it, why can't we have some?"

Terrigal Beach

Adam and Caitlin on the waters edge

The surf was flat as a pancake but Tom still managed to catch a wave, this was taken after it left him beached on the sand.

Bodysurfing optimism

Shortly after Caitlin first headed off to swim she came running back up the beach to me full of excitement. She'd been swimming along and saw four fairly decent sized fish in the water with her, on the basis of her description Adam reckons they might have been bream, she saw a whole bunch more during the course of the afternoon too. If only there weren't so many people in the water it might have been worth throwing a line in. Not that we had any fishing gear with us. Tom wanted to see the fish too and spent quite some time with goggles borrowed from Caitlin (he'd forgotten to bring his), head submerged in the water but sadly he searched in vain, didn't see a single fin. It was with some no small effort that he conceded that the beach was still fun even without fish-sightings.

Tom wrestling with disappointment

On a more domestic note, I will be starting the school term with a tidy pantry and Tupperware cupboard. I've taken photos to preserve the state of order for posterity because I know perfectly well that here in the world of entropy and kids unpacking groceries and dishwashers the degree of organisation will last approximately half a day. And there's no way I'm dispensing with child labour in favour of tidy cupboards :P

This cupboard is the bane of my existence, when the dishwasher is open you can't open the doors to the left hand side and so things that belong in there get piled up on the bench above and no one seems to know where anything goes so the things that belong in the right hand side get added to the piles on the bench as well. And then along comes someone in a hurry who wants to start cooking and the random piles get picked up and shoved in anywhere they'll fit.

Maybe if I stuck this picture on the inside of the pantry door people would know where to put stuff back after they've finished with it...