Sprinklers, furniture polish and boxes and boxes of books.

Oh, and £500 at Ikea 😯 which was entertaining as much as anything because i got to spot lots of my friends’ furniture! Max tried very hard to hurry me through the market place, while being a “it’s not on the list” killjoy, then went rampant in the showroom and bought £300 worth of furniture! So i had the last laugh. We’d already decided we were going to have to go back, as they didn’t have the loo roll holders we wanted, so the £10 for every £100 on your storecard offer seemed quite appealing. We therefore get to go back with £50 worth of vouchers. 🙄 :champers:

So we’ve spent the weekend mainly sans children, who had a weekend with my parents, aside from Josie who was delicious company. She has helped unpack boxes “dere y’go” and been generally wonderful. She managed to pronouce Amelie’s babys name (June-y) and perfected a very Buttercup-esque “otay” for “okay” as well. We all like that one 😀 Have i mentioned Amelie’s current haul of babies, by the way? She has Juney-y, Contess (a boy) Kiki (another boy but somewhat undersized) and Custard, plus she is currently pregnant with twins due to be named Smelly and Belly and who will be born out of her leg as they will die if they come out of her bottom or tummy. The girl has birth story trauma 🙄

Since last night Max and i have been unpacking books and wondering how many you can reasonably have on bookcases situated upstairs. The girls room is done, pretty much, in an undecorated but pleasingly unpacked sort of a way and the dining/playroom is beginning to have “stuff to do” in it. I started polishing my lovely dresser, Josie underfoot, tonight, only for her to slam the door shut on some dvds she’d pulled out of it and shatter the bottom of one of the doors. 👿

I’ve faithfully promised the girls its is back to normal tomorrow and so i’ve made sure i have stuff out for them to do. I’ve signed them up to Education City too, so i’ve got places for people to sit and be doing stuff. Fran is suddenly very into CBBC, from Raven to Tracy Beaker to Primary History, so she’ll perhaps do some of that among other things. I’m not prepared for her to watch wall to wall tat but i’m pleased she’s stretching her wings a bit in terms of what she’ll watch. Maddy is on a real drawing binge and Amelie is very into computing. Josie is just Josie; givce her Dora in some form and she’s happy.

Not sure what else the week holds; i need to organise some child care, get to the allotment, plant some herbs and seeds in the garden and see some people too. The girls are desperate for a trip out, but it’ll have to be free as we’re spent up and business is shockingly quiet, even for May 😕 Fran has been out riding her bike this afternoon, so maybe we’ll do more of that somewhere.

I promise faithfully to get this back to an HE blog now.