It Felt Like Two Years
Tomorrow, the Piglets go back to school after 2 weeks of holidays. For those outside of Australia, our school year runs from late January through till around mid December and is broken up into four equal terms of around 10 weeks each. At the end of every term we have a 2 week break, and at the end of fourth term in December, the summer holidays are 6 weeks.
Anyhoo, the kids’ bags are packed, lunches have been premade (my single biggest timesaver for stress-free mornings) and I’m psyching myself up for another ten weeks of after school reader books, charts, show-and-tell, school excursions, lost canteen money, and rotten apples. This term Boofah and Miss Moo also have swimming lessons, run through the school (it’s part of the school curriculum in my state that where possible, 5 x 45-60 min swimming lessons at a local pool are run once per year. They do this over the course of one week. Some rural areas without ready access to a pool may be exempt though - I’m not entirely certain). Master J, the lucky thing, gets a weekly swimming lesson all the way through the year, as part of his special ed classroom’s curriculum. Which, I might add, is a completely brilliant program. That kid is part fish.
So I’m sitting here now twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the dryer to finish. After all, it wouldn’t be the night before a school day if I wasn’t running a load of something at 11 o’clock at night.
We have a busy week planned. Tomorrow is grocery shopping day. Usually this would not take long but I haven’t finished my menu yet so I’ll have to do that first, plus I’m hoping my sweet husband will take me on a mini drive to the butcher and fruit and veg shop. I don’t get to go there every week so I’m planning a stock-up.
Tuesday, after the Piglets are safe and sound in their classrooms, Talented Hubby and I are heading into the city where we’ll be swinging by a photography exhibition and also an iconic church. Okay, so it’s a cathedral, and our city is actually called ‘The City of Churches’ (although, I suspect the Vatican might have words to say on that one), but I’ve always wanted to have a sticky-beak in that place and have never had the opportunity until now. Hubs frequents a couple of photography websites and came across some awesome interior shots of the cathedral and got an itchin’ to duplicate (or, knowing Hubs, to better) the images. It seems that this isn’t as uncommon a request as we’d thought so depending on when it is convenient for the staff, Hubs will do his photog thing (it goes without saying that we would never impose on a service or take photos with anybody present). He’s really quite brilliant at it. No, not biased at all, LOL.
Wednesday is a potter-about-the-house kind of day and then Thursday I’ve scheduled an MDO (Mum’s Day Off) which will probably involve another trip into the city (this time for shopping of course!). Good Times.
Bloggityville Blood Drive 2008 is scheduled to start on Monday 5th May however so far it seems nobody is coming to the party! The needles really aren’t that big. Honest! If you are planning to have a go, leave a comment to this post so I know whether to put up the Mr Linky or not. If there doesn’t seem to be any takers, I may have to reschedule for later in the year. In a weird twist of fate it appears I cannot donate blood during my own blood drive. My last donation (whole blood) was in late March so the three months rule won’t be up until late June. I had hoped I might be able to give a platelet donation before then, but it doesn’t seem likely. This was always a possibility but I was always going to host the carnival anyway :)
Well, that’s the dryer done. Nighty-night Bloggityville!
Cheers,
Lizzie
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Just an Aussie mother to three, wife to one, special needs advocate, sometimes crafter, always procrastinator and awesome baker. Well maybe not bread. Bread alludes me.
Awww Lizzie, too bad nobody signed up. I thought about it, but with all my health stuff going on I thought it could be a bad idea.
I’ll be thinking of you as I’m getting my gall bladder ultrasounded tomorrow…it looks like I may have to get it removed. Ick!
I suppose that is a good excuse, huh? :P
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Not allowed to donate with the medication I’m on SORRY!
What’s your biggest tip with the premaid lunches at the moment?
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Scattered - *smile* Yes, I do believe that gets you a get out of jail free card…THIS TIME, LOL. Take care and get your health up.
Katrina - no problem! The rules for different countries can be quite strict. In Australia there’s a big ol’ questionaire they make you fill out with each donation.
My tip for lunches is simply to get as much of them made the night before as possible. I make sandwiches, wrap cookies, whatever and then put the non-refridgeratables right into the lunchboxes which I put out on the bench - crackers (wrapped), baked goods, fruit (if it’s not hot - if it is, they get put in the fridge), muesli bars (granola bars) if we’re having those, etc. The sandwiches get put in the fridge along with anything else that needs to be kept cold and I fill the kids’ water bottles as well. In the mornings, it takes me one minute to throw a sandwich into a lunchbox and grab a water bottle, and perhaps an extra minute to put everything into their school bags. I would DIE if I ever had to make sandwiches in the morning again. I like knowing that all I have to do to get J ready for the taxi is to feed him breakfast, help him dress, throw his lunchbox in his bag and supervise teeth brushing. We aim to be ready for the taxi at 7:40 and we often don’t get up until 7:15 so to throw 20mins of making lunches into the mix would be a disaster, LOL.
Oh, and we always, always lay out school uniforms the night before. Ditto for the rushed morning thing!
Cheers,
Lizzie
Oh whoops Katrina - figured you were a US reader! Well of course you’ll know exactly what I mean by muesli bars then :)
Cheers,
Lizzie
I am in same boat -can’t give blood till June …
I can’t wait for the kids next door to go back to school - they are always playing in my backyard -trashing it or banging the door off waking my toddlers at nap time looking for my eldest … I will miss him -keeping the little ones occupied
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I didn’t know until now it was on - sorry from me - I’ll check it out now though. As for school holidays, they’re on here now and finish next Monday, I must say it’s nice not having to be out the door first thing inthe morning and having to make lots of lunches at night :-)
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I haven’t donated for ages, I really should get back into that as my blood group is one of the less common ones and they love me at the blood bank, my veins are so easy to get into. My daughter has the same blood group as me and donates regularly but her veins lie deeper and often the nurses have to try several times to find one.