A weekend at home

We've had a few quiet days at home over the weekend and Friday, and it's been lovely. Interesting though how different those days can feel, even though they might look the same on the surface (just hanging out at home playing and reading and talking).

Friday felt like the perfect home day to me. There was nowhere else I'd rather be and nothing that I'd rather be doing than whatever I was doing at any given time. Really being able to go with what the kids and I want to do makes a massive difference to how I feel about my day - when I get caught up in (my) anxiety about whether we 'should' be doing something or not, it impacts greatly on how happy and content I feel about the day (Saturday was more like that).

On Friday I was up early and went for a walk, watered my plants etc. Tony has been starting work at 7, so it's easy for me to get up at 6 when his alarm goes off, rather than waking myself and lying there for a while wondering if I should try to get more sleep or get up and get going. I had a bit of time to myself in the morning, then the kids got up and we were all in a good mood. We played lego - the kids built and played games with their creations, I played a bit and spent a lot of time sorting the lego table (everything had become all mixed up, and we'd been storing other things on the table as well - that's all cleared now). We watched movies - Barbie as the Island Princess, and Mumma Mia (I hadn't seen it before and realised I knew NOTHING about it other than the fact that it contained ABBA songs. I quite enjoyed it, although I think it would be much better as a stage show than a movie). We played Minecraft and Terraria - individually and together throughout the day. We played other iPad games, again sometimes as a group, sometimes alone. We read books - I'm reading Eragon to LiAM, and the girls listen when they feel like it. I read other library books as well. I tidied things up in between playing with the kids, we had lots of great conversations, everything went smoothly. In the evening we were planning to go and see the Penguins of Madagascar at Bayswater Outdoor Cinema, but there was a thunderstorm so the event was cancelled. We were all disappointed, although I was happy to stay home. I suggested we invite our friends over who we were planning to meet there - they also mainly felt like staying home, except for Caitlin's friend S, who came for a sleepover. The girls chatted and played on the swings and played Terraria and watched Mumma Mia again, LiAM joined them for a while. They went to bed after I did, but I don't think they stayed up as late as they sometimes do.

A lot of rain came with the thunderstorm on Friday night (yay, rain! We have had very little this summer) and it was still raining on Saturday morning. Caitlin had wanted to take her friend to meet our neighbour, E - she lives next door by herself and loves having the kids come to visit. They can easily walk or ride there through the front of our property. The rain made this trip more difficult, and S was going home early as she had things on that day, so Caitlin started the day feeling a bit disappointed. I was feeling anxious as well, not about anything in particular, just a general all round anxiety, so even though we did many of the same things we'd done the day before, it didn't run as smoothly. I think I was trying too hard to make things better for Caitlin because she was disappointed, but also wanted to have an easy day, and it got a bit tense. It was still a pretty good day though. We played and sorted more lego, played Minecraft, played cards (Go Fish, and Up and Down the River), Millie watched more Barbie movies on the computer. LiAM played Pacman 2 on the Playstation.  The kids went next door to see E after it stopped raining, and they decided to write letters to her grandkids who live in America. They came home and wrote the letters and Caitlin rode back over to drop them off, and fell off her bike on the way back. She has a sore wrist and ankle and hip but no bad injuries. Tony came home late in the evening from work and watched the cricket, while Caitlin and LiAM and I took one of our broody chickens (and her eggs and nesting box) to a friend's house, as they would like more chickens and we have quite a few at the moment!

Yesterday was calmer again. I was able to say yes more easily to things the kids asked me to do (playing games, food they'd like me to prepare for them etc) - when I'm anxious I find it harder to say yes, even if I'm happy to do it. I am just more distracted and can't concentrate as easily - so I'm hoping to work on that, staying focussed on our home life when I'm anxious, instead of resenting the fact that I can't hide away in a corner somewhere which is what I feel like doing. I also find it helps to do lots of nurturing things like reading a book, playing on the iPad, sorting my photos - really doing what I WANT to be doing instead of running around doing housework when I'm anxious - and from there it's also much easier to say YES when the kids want me to do something with them. So yesterday, Tony was at work again (these 7 day work weeks are tough!), and we stayed home and watching movies (Island Princess again), played horses, read Batman comics, read Eragon, played on the iPad - lots of Township yesterday, me playing with the kids watching, read other library books, a bit of lego, the kids visited E again. Oh and we buried one of our little chicks who died yesterday - that was sad for all of us, one of the aspects of having animals that is less enjoyable, but also a useful way to increase understanding about life and death and impermanence and so on.

It was a hot day and we planned to go to the dam for a swim, but with no shade down there I prefer to leave it until the sun is low in the sky. We wanted to pull our camper trailer out to see if any rain had gotten through the cover (it's been damp after rain before) so Caitlin and I had a go at it while Tony was at work. It was hard going with just the 2 of us, and it was SO hot in the tent and I got a bit flustered a couple of times (and even a bit panicky when it kind of collapsed on me while I was in there) but we got it up properly - great to know we can do it without Tony, so I know I can take the kids away by myself if we want to go away during Vintage. After that we had a good rest, watched Phineas and Ferb for a while, then went to the dam for a lovely swim as the sun was setting. The water was a beautiful temperature (mainly) and Tony came home from work and joined us for a while. Back home once it was dark, for showers and getting ready for bed. The kids downloaded a new game onto the computer and played it for a while. I found a frog on the driveway when I took the bin out so we all went back out and looked at it for a while, and it surprised us by jumping quite a distance every time we stopped shining the torch on it. Then to bed, where I read more Batman comics (I'm enjoying them too, especially the chapters with Green Arrow - he's funny, and I love his relationship with Batman) and more of Eragon. I went back outside after that to find the cat who'd been out all day, I eventually enticed her in (well actually I pounced on her and carried her in by the scruff of her neck) and finally got to bed just before midnight.