Erk, thought I'd posted this, but I'd merely saved it as draft. Dummy!

Half Term

Good grief, where does the time go?! I was only just catching up on August and September, and suddenly October is almost over too! Well, after several weeks of toddler diahorrea, followed by an Ofstead inspection for Mark(Argh!), then a second round of puking and pooing from the kids, we made it to half term. Instead of doing the sensible thing and 'getting some rest' (whatever that means!) we've done our best to fill the week. On Saturday we went over to Swindon to the outlet centre, with little success, we ended up going to Mothercare and buying both kids full-price shoes- Elodie's are exactly the same as the ones she's had all summer. That evening we watched War of the Worlds, which ticked all the boxes, and was pretty much what we'd both expected. On Sunday we had church here, as is usual at the moment, followed by a glorious roast meal with Matt, Anna, Joe & Emma. We rounded that off nicely with dinky kiddie-decorated cakes served on the cake stand I got for my birthday. Not too shabby!
On Monday, Caleb had a pre-school eyetest in the morning then we went to Venture in Witney for some family photos. The kids loved it of course, being the centre of attention. As someone who resolutely stays behind the camera, I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. We all just enjoyed ourselves, messing around together the way we normally do, and doing as we were told when the photographer came up with any suggestions. As an extra treat we went to McDonalds for dinner, then took our tired bunnies home to bed.
On Tuesday we went to Ikea Milton Keynes to stock up on mugs for church, order bedroom furniture, and try out their mattresses (rubbish) all made much easier by packing Caleb off to their supervised play area- it's amazing what can be achieved in 45 minutes when you don't have a 3-year-old in tow! For futeure reference, a winning formula seems to be: Lunch - a look around - 'serious' shopping minus Caleb - playing with the kids stuff - a treat from the cafe - the markethall - paying with a card that isn't declined. Oh yes, there was a saga with my Visa- still to be explained by the Card company- for some reason the assistant couldn't get an authorisation code, meanwhile the card company phoned Mark to check whether it was us using the card, Tesco/RBS said it would go through fine, but then I was still asked to verify all my security details to the operator who had been on the phone with the Ikea assistant. The card eventually went through, obviously, but it's a bit of a mystery as to why it was so complicated. And I wasn't impressed by being asked to share my security details when I was stood in the middle of a shop. After all that, we popped into ASDA to pick up some stuff for tea, then timed the journey home perfectly for the kids to fall asleep. After installing the kids in their beds, and tidying away all our purchases, we settled down to watch Oliver! A bizarre experience, to say the least, I'd never seen it before, but knew all the songs, and had seen the odd bit here and there, so it was like watching something familiar, but brand-new at the same time. It's amazing to me that it won all those Oscars, I thought it was diabolical! Of course, we dissected it, talked about the social climate at the time it was made, suggested alternative editing etc. instead of going to bed at a decent time...
On Wednesday we had the emotional job of selecting the prints we liked from our venture session. My word, talk about heartbreaking - about 70 percent of the photos were perfect, just buying the two we chose cost a small fortune. So look out for the new additions around Christmas time and tell us they're outstanding, won't you?! After those difficult choices, popping to the Aquatics shop for a couple more fish was much easier! So now we have Bongo, Bango, Lingo and Darth (as in Maul, not Vader. And of course, he's a bug-eyed Black Moor, what else!)
On Thursday we did a 'normal' day where I stayed at home with the kids while Mark popped into Witney for a few DIY bits, then spent the afternoon in Kidlington while the new car key was programmed. Typically, I had a really hellish time of it as far as the kids' bladders and bowels went, and I did my usual thing of panicking that I could never survive Mark going back to work ever again!
On Friday we spent a great deal of time trying out mattresses and resolutely not buying one 'on impulse', then we popped in to Mark's parents to borrow a couple of props for that evening's Murder Mystery Party to celebrate Matt's 30th. Mark was a boat owner (who turned out to be a smuggler) and I had the terribley suitable role of a successful actress.
To round the week off nicely, on Saturday we went to CadburyWorld. What a brilliant day! We all ate a fair amount of chocolate, obviously, but the best bit was seeing the kids as aengaged as they were (well, as engaged as they could be!) by everything that was going on there. If you haven't been before, we'd highly recommend it. If you have been before, they've added a seperate bit called Essense where they show you how they first invented Dairy Milk (they tell it with a huge dollop of artistic license) and there are some more interactive bits at the end of the main tour now, too. So you can exercise off all those samples, probably. The best bit for us was that the kids are still free, and we used Tesco Deals tokens to pay for our tickets, so we got to splash out in the Cadbury shop!

Catch up

If anybody really cares, here's what we've been up to from August - October!
We got home from our holiday and it was back to Earth with a bump- we returned to a leaking Freezer, and fleas in our mattress. Both were less dramatic than they had first appeared, and were swiftly dealt with!
Mark went into school for the GCSE results, and had a bit of a clear out in their 'office' over a couple of days, while we practiced doing normal days again.
We popped to Wales for the day (again) for Sam & Oscars Christening, and more bouncing on the trampoline. It was nice to catch up with Mick & Lucy - the couple who bought our flat from us in Southampton - and to meet their kids, who are very close in age to ours. We caused a bit of a stir with our Christening gift to Sam, mainly I think because it wasn't the traditional heavy KJV bible that he received a number of! Rhiannon's Dad was really interested because he'd never come across anything like it before, I wonder if he had a look at it actually - I think it would be his kind of thing...
We scoured the DIY stores of Oxfordshire for the right bathroom tiles, then ended taking most of them back due to a slight mis-calcuation (D'oh!) The bathroom was torn out and completely re-fitted, which meant getting the baby bath down from the loft, and improvising for a couple of days. The Mayfields and the Biddlecombes showers were greatly appreciated by us too! The guys who did it were lovely, they were a pleasure to have around the house (though Elodie's persistant screaming must have driven them as crazy as us) and we got into some very intense discussions about God, and all sorts!
Caleb accompanied Mark on an educational trip to the vets to witness the cats having their booster vaccinations.
Mum and Dad packed us off for hot chocolate at Cafe Noir and had the kids for a couple of hours, which was very unexpected - and greatly appreciated - and we took the opportunity to nip to a bed shop to try out a couple of mattresses while we were out! We then went back to theirs and had a Chinese together, which was lovely. We spent most of the day and evening with them in the end - and we'd only dropped in to pop a couple of holiday souvenirs into them! Living so close, you'd think we'd do it more often, but it's quite rare that we're free at the same time, and it was a real treat.
We temporarily defected to the Oxford Church for Ben's baptism, then enjoyed an afternoon with all the Thomases and Clarkes. Ben introduced us to his hawk, and Caleb and I were both brave enough to hold him! I have to say, if it had been anyone else I wouldn't have dared, but Ben is so calm and confident with him that I didn't have any qualms about it at all. Ben's really enthusiastic about his birds, and it sort of rubs off!
Our anniversary was, as always, Mark's first day back, so we cheated by buying a pre-cooked duck and pancakes, followed by these, and spent the evening playing Wit's End, and discussing the book we were both mid-way through. It wasn't earth-shatteringly romantic, but it was wonderful just to enjoy each others' company - something that somehow we didn't feel we had done as much as we would have liked while Mark was off.
Term started - and despite frantic breakfasts etc. - Caleb's 'upgrade' to 5 mornings a week at pre-school has been marvellous! Our children are both wonderful individually, but together they are a nightmare most of the time!
September, of course always sends Mark into a frenzy, but we managed to fit a few nice things in; we squeezed in a couple of movie nights (Signs & Edward Scissorhands) with 2 of Mark's pupils who babysit for us; the kids and I went to Joe's fireman birthday party; we offloaded the kids with Lorraine, and went for a 'grown-up' lunch with my parents, to celebrate my birthday; We celebrated again on my actual birthday when Matt, Anna, Nathan, and Nikki came over for a Mexican, a rare treat.
After making the effort to make September less gruelling than usual, October has gotten off to a shakey start, with both the kids getting a gastro thing that is dragging on and on. Now they and I have colds too, and I had a blinding headache for about three days, that seems to have settled to a dull thud today. Add into this my Nana rushing to hospital, then suffering delusions, and Mark not only working like stink at school and in the evenings but also staying at school for Open Evening, then spending all of yesterday on a TEFL taster day, and you've got 4 tired Thomases. If it hadn't been for Mark taking a day off after Caleb's worst night, and my Mum stepping in to have two pooey kids while I had my hair done, I think I would have gone insane- I've barely been outside the front door in the last 10 days, and it's a bit crazy-making!
On the plus side: I think I've just about got the Christmas shopping in hand, and we've decided to go to Lille to check out the markets in the week before Christmas, so that's something to plan and look forward to. And a neighbour saved us rental costs by lending us their chainsaw, and Mark's had a go at our out-of-control garden. You can't keep us down for long!