It's been a funny old time...

We've been living for a while now as a family of 3 as Jake's been away for most of the last month. First he went to TRENZ (a tourism exhibition) in Rotorua for a week, then he came home for a few days, and then he went off again, this time to Europe for 3 weeks (working apparently, although his Facebook feed suggests otherwise).

While he's been away lots of stuff has happened.

First this....the result of some over-enthusiastic gym practise. (Lesson learnt - don't ever rush a bend-back).

While she couldn't do gym for a while, and she couldn't write or do schoolwork or get dressed or brush her teeth very well either, it's not easy to keep Molly still and she insisted on continuing to do as much as she could, despite my constant cries of "Stop!", and "Keep still!"

Then THIS happened. A week later, with her arm still in a sling, Molly came down with a (rather scarey) case of Bronchitis which had me on the telephone to the hospital one evening and a visit to the doctor's surgery the next morning.

We came home from the doctor's with a big stock of illness supplies, which included half the pharmacy plus a couple of Secret Seven books which I found on special at The Warehouse (it's not often you find books at $2.50 each in New Zealand). I thought they might keep her going for a while so I could get some work done....I didn't bank on the fact that she'd finish both books within 24 hours!

The virus was so bad that she ended up being off school for a week :( I decided that good nutrition was in order and made up endless batches of soups - in the process discovering that combining purple carrot and pumpkin doesn't make an appealing looking batch of soup (it tasted great, so long as we closed our eyes ;))  Next time I will revert back to the orange carrots.

This lengthy injury/illness in Molly might have given her the time to perfect her six and seven times tables, but it presented me with a major problem in Alfie. There was only one of me, Molly needed to stay in bed or on the couch for a long time, and Alfie is ALWAYS bursting with energy. So I had to get creative and energetic - I'm not sure I did the best job ever, but he was mostly kept entertained.

We went out a bit, just to places where we could place Molly somewhere in the sun under a blanket with a book while Alfie played soccer and went scootering.... and we played and played and played in the back yard too (cricket, obstacle courses, etc). Hope you had enough fun Alfie!

Thanks too must go to the other families who took him out to play tennis, soccer, and more soccer - especially one in particular who hunted around in the mud for ages with him when his tooth fell out as he saved a goal! They didn't find the tooth :( so the tooth fairy got the following letter:

Love the last sentence! And yes, she brought the ""monyay".

Only this weekend did Molly finally start to show small signs of recovery. We took it relatively easy and got old toys and games out that we haven't seen for ages like Battleships, Jenga and Hopscotch. The enforced relaxation was actually really lovely!

By yesterday evening she was just about well enough to go out to the FIFA Under 20s World Cup Quarter Finals - thank goodness, as the tickets cost me some $$'s and I would have hated for us to have missed out! Senegal vs Uzbekistan wasn't a game I would have normally chosen to go to, but it was what Wellington got, it made Alfie a very excited little chap, and Molly finally got to have a bit of fun again too!