Tag: William

End of an Era

The schools broke up yesterday and two months of Summer vacation starts today for all three of the boys. And big changes are ahead for us because the twins have now graduated from primary school and will be embarking on their secondary school careers in September.

While attending their graduation ceremony on Tuesday, it struck me that I will never again need to return to the local school, and nor will any of them be able to walk to school. From here on in, all of three boys will be traveling to the next town for their education.

We have much to prepare, but today we shall enjoy the first day of the Summer holiday.

Ten plus Ten

Alexandre and William both hit ten years old today and, since they are at school, we have the best part of the day to make sure everything is ready for this evening.

There’s no party this year because of the coronavirus, and the outdoor play area we would normally unleash the kids onto is still closed. But we will be having a barbecue tomorrow (which is promising to be the hottest day of the year so far) and plans are afoot for a proper (if small) celebration either this weekend or next.

Hitting double figures is not something that can go unacknowledged and, today, there will be cake.

William’s cardboard candy dispenser

During the summer, William showed me a video on YouTube and said: “I want to make one of these. Will you help me?”

And with that, Project Candy was launched.

It has taken a while as we had to acquire plenty of cardboard boxes as well as a glue gun that an eight-year old can manage as well as assorted other building materials. But, this weekend, we completed the the candy machine, loaded it up, and it worked.

Or it did until the cat kicked it off a shelf today.

Given that he’s eight, I am both surprised and impressed at how well he has stuck with this. The process has been a bit piecemeal — we do a bit, leave it for a week, and then come back and do a bit more. But the project was never abandoned and, especially when we started seeing things coming together he became increasingly keen to complete the machine.

I have been surprised to learn that there is quite a variety of cardboard constructions being built on YouTube and, now that William is happy handling both a Stanley knife and a glue gun, he wants to build a safe.

Not to be trusted with soft toys

This weekend, William was given the responsibility of looking after the class dog. So we took him out and had a few adventures, one of which resulted in the dog being left in my care for five minutes.

This is what happened next.

Stump

Some friends recently dug up an old tree stump and, for reasons probably best not explored, asked if we wanted it. Of course, we said yes and said stump was duly acquired and unloaded. The plan was to leave it until the weekend and then start trying to figure out if there is anything we can do with it.

I think we’ll manage.

Angry Gnomes

On Friday, I was home alone with the kids and, while the weather could have been better, it was certainly too nice to stay indoors all day. The kids, however, wanted to stay inside and play Angry Birds.

So we compromised…