Making it to school and back

So I have been enjoying having a bit of child-free time – the house looks tidy (won’t last long – they’re due home soon and it only takes them seconds to undo the day’s work!!), the bathrooms are clean, the shopping is done, I have managed to drink a whole cup of tea before it went cold and I have finished the latest book I was reading. I just have to get through the actual school run now!! Not only do I end up carrying all four bags (pack-horse springs to mind) but I also have to hold various hands and referee the arguments and fallings out on the way. When they come racing out of school it is always great to see them, they come out laden with coat, jumper, book bag, lunchbox, school bag and dump it all at my feet! I then spend the next five minutes packing all their stuff up into their bags ready for me to carry it home, I then look round to find that they have unpacked ALL of it again because they wanted to get their drink bottle out of their lunch bags. So I pack everything up again when Georgia decides that she has to get her painting out of her book-bag to show her friends, so once again we have to riffle back through the bag again. Then Millie arrives holding a toy lizard that has accidently got split at school and she is upset because the sand is pouring out (and by the way, this is somehow MY fault – even though I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to take it to school in the first place, but still, it’s apparently MY fault!!) So I am now trying to get all the kids rounded up and scoop up all the bags, while carefully holding the lizard so that it doesn’t spill anymore sand before I can get it home and perform some emergency surgery on it. Hannah then decides that she wants her painting that she did at school (the suggestion that she could maybe get it tomorrow is met with crying and much stamping of feet) so she heads back into school to get her painting, in the meantime Abbie has fallen over and scraped her elbow and I am doing my best to comfort her, without dropping all the bags off my shoulders or spilling anymore sand from the lizard and now I also have to carry Hannah’s painting. Eventually we make it home and collapse inside the door and emergency ‘sand saving’ surgery is performed on the poorly lizard.

And just for any of you who are keeping track of our A&E visits, then we have another to add!! On Sunday Georgia came downstairs crying saying she’s got an acorn stuck up her nose!! (Yes, you read that correctly – AN ACORN!!) And sure enough, on closer inspection, there is a bulge at the side of Georgia’s nose. Oh great, Sunday mornings in A&E are not what anybody needs – but off Rob & Georgia go and they arrive back hours later with Georgia now acorn free!! (she has a small acorn in a little sample tube!!) Never a dull moment with kids........!!