Pond Life

The pond in Lochend Woods, Dunbar. Spontaneous cuddles are a feature of our home and here's a lovely moment.

It was a "SO SUNDAY" Wednesday for us today.

We were all pretty tired after yesterday's thousand miles (feels that way anyway!) as evidenced by a never-before-heard unanimous "No" to my suggestion of the swimming pool. So despite the perfect weather we didn't leave the house until later in the the afternoon.

Whilst the boys walked to the beach, Katie and Gordy and I went to the shops for some things. We went the leafy-quiet-autumn-route and stopped off to explore the pond, to find it covered in duckweed. I brought some home and put it in the coldwater fish tank. Hopefully Phineas and Ferb won't die. We'll see.

The house is full of science-ish toys today and the big hits were the gyroscopes and the "UFO" pocket helicopter. The indoor boomerang, fly-in-a-circle paper aeroplanes, gooey coloured ball modelling stuff, retro glassfibre lamp and "amazing flying UFO" which you control from a thread attached to your ear (yes, really) were all great fun.

The biggest reaction was reserved for the times-table snap (3x4, 6x2... SNAP!) which was my own purchase. Duncan, Gordon and I made a LOT of noise winning and losing stacks of cards. Brilliant, intense fun.

And the 5 year old Harrods purchase "Lights From Nowhere magic thumbs" came out of the toy cupboard, after we were again dazzled by the well-practised "Marvin's Magic" demonstrators in Harrods yesterday. The lights still work and even Katie can now do a pretty convincing "swallow the light then pull it out your ear" trick. Which, inevitably, quickly becomes the "swallow the light and poop it out your bum" trick. Gets a laugh anyway.

Brilliant long journey iPad app BTW: GameRoom. 69p, doesn't try to be too clever, lets two to four people play board games including our favourite Go and Atari Go. The children played that for HOURS yesterday, and again today. It was good to learn Mancala and various others as well, and I like that the games' histories are summarised in the "click here" rules. Highly recommended. Almost an iPad killer app - but of course you must also have Cut The Rope and that Irate Avians thing as well.

Hilarious to notice today that Asda have dealt with the Scottish ban on multi-buy alcohol deals with loads of £3.33 wines. To honour their cheek, I bought some. And to be fair to the Scottish Parliament, I only bought 2. Sort of a triumph. Sort of.