Fourth and final week of school

13th - 19th July 2020
Weather: A bit of everything.

Tabby enjoys joining in with games. We were playing "duck-duck-goose". 

Isabella had her last day of year one on Thursday. Summer holiday started on Friday!

 

Last day of Year One!

Neighbourhood watch

 We started the holiday with holiday hair! Hair cut is booked for next month too. And then Isabella baked and decorated a cake. She made a video too which mummy still needs to edit.

The weekend:

We spent Saturday on the beach with a borrowed SUP. It was slightly more windy than the previous weekend but still a great day out. We left even earlier in the morning this time, which means we get good parking and beach spots and get home earlier in the day too. Works well.

It happened to be Madiba Day (Nelson Mandela Day) in South Africa on Saturday!

Isabella played Barbies on her own for a bit.

And we got to enjoy chatting and just sitting together uninterrupted for a bit!

We're now nearing the end of a lazy Sunday at home. It was a bit rainy this morning and a bit grey the rest of the day with bits of sunshine. The way it's been most of this week! Andre washed his car, Isabella played Barbies, Playmobil, pets and Sylvanian Families all mixed together! And we ended with a late afternoon cycle.

The Barbies living their best life!

Third week back at school

Monday, 6th - Sunday, 12th July 2020
Weather: Started out cloudy/ rainy and ended with a sunny weekend.

Here's our past week in pictures.

Finishing this area is one of the only things I can actually say I've accomplished while Isabella
has been back at school. I've been waiting to take a picture once the sunflowers are flowering.
I'm sure you'll be seeing another once there are more flowers to show.

We were gifted some succulent leaves to propagate and at the same time finally repotted all of our house plants.
Nearly all now live in Isabella's room. She calls it her forest! They are in her room as she likes to keep her door shut
and the plants are either mildly poisonous to cats or to protect the non poisonous ones from little sharp cat teeth belonging
to a curious cat. The aloe is the one we were also gifted when she burnt her hand a few years ago. It grows like mad and keeps producing babies. Isabella enjoys taking care of the plants for me.

One of Tabby's spots.

Learning about algorithms starts with setting out clear instructions in correct order.
I love Isabella's writing.

Here's a cute card she brought home.

Tabby loves a den of any kind.

I got to have my hair done!

Morning snoozes...

Tabby jumped into the dolls pushchair and Isabella took him for a ride. He lies down happily.

We celebrated a friend's birthday. The girls are in school together so might as well play together on special occasions at home too. They don't have to social distance at school in their small bubbles.

Evie from the movie Descendants made a special appearance for the birthday girl!
Party entertainers now doing remote parties!

Birthday celebrations continued with a small garden party.

Garden party ended with an outdoor cinema in onesies for the kids!

Amazing weekend sunshine! We made a last minute decision on Sunday morning to drive down to the beach.
We left very early and the beach stayed fairly quiet until around lunch time. We left early, enough beach time
without getting home late and exhausted, with still some 'Sunday' left to relax at home. The way all three of us like it.

Tabby found the week exhausting!

Second week back at school

29th June - 5th July 2020
Weather: Quite windy, cloudy, cool, rainy. A bit of everything.

The excitement of the first week back at school has now worn off and Isabella is already asking to stay home again. I'm really enjoying doing more work again so she will definitely be staying in school for the maximum time which is only a total of four weeks, now two left, before summer holidays. She still enjoys school once she's there though.

On Monday we went strawberry picking after school.

We've had some trees trimmed in preparation for getting the fence replaced on one side of the garden and Tabby and Isabella both enjoyed the logs.

We had the kitchen tiled behind the stove as well as the little bit by the basin which always got splashed when washing up there. It's made such a difference to the kitchen.

Before

After

Saturday we had a successful afternoon fishing with friends. We caught at least eight little fish.

And today we had a lovely (windy) day at a lake and beach. It was also Isabella's first time playing Crazy Golf and she loved it!

First week back at school

22 - 28 June 2020
Weather: Very very hot.

I meant to do this at the end of last week but didn't get around to it and somehow it's the end of another weekend already! So I'll first show you the previous week and then will do a next post about this past week and we'll see if I can keep up with weekly blog posts.

Isabella really enjoyed her first week back at school. She's had no issues with them being in smaller class groups, maximum 15 but only 13 in her class. And with two different teachers than she was used to having before for year 1, although she likes both of these teachers too. The only thing she misses are some of her friends who are in the other two groups. But she has a good selection in her current group too and how lucky to have two teachers for 13 children!

It was a very very hot week. Too hot to do much. We've been thankful for the aircon unit Andre purchased last year. I didn't feel we really needed it for the few hot days a year we get, but when it's hot it's really hot and has been great to cool down the bedrooms upstairs.

Cooling off before school.

And cooling off after school.

Tabby had lots of time in the garden, not making him run too much although he did give me a scare when he ran up a tree the first time. Luckily either jumped down straight away or was within reach for me to get him back down before he could escape further.

We stroked Tabby with wet hands and gave him cubes of ice to play with to cool him down.

Can you find Tabby?

There he is!

Isabella is still doing her tap dancing classes via Zoom. She's not the biggest fan of doing it this way, but joins about every other week to stay on top of the routines.

Kitty cuddles every morning.

The LOL dolls were all put back in their original dresses and shoes.

Landscape painted by Isabella.