9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 - blast off!

I love the countdown to the school hols even more than the kids do. So much to do, but we'll get there. So much going on, hectic but fun. And we're having fabulous sunshine so it all seems just right.

This morning I disposed of all the detritus from the School Fair by taking a big carload to the charity shops and a smaller load to the dump. My friend Delphine helped and we made a good team because I was "get this stuff outta here" Bad Cop and she was "oh, this is so nice, someone must want it" Good Cop. So she ended up taking home a big box of cr*p and I came home with nothing but a smug grin. So then we took a picnic to East Links Family Park after nursery. The place was jam-packed with visitors from Edinburgh nursery schools but by 2pm they'd all gone and order was restored. Soon it was time to start the usual Wednesday craziness of tennis lessons, pals visiting for tea and then taekwon-do.

The lads and I have made a list of things we want to do in the summer holidays. In amongst "visit Bamburgh Castle" and so on, they have decided that they want to "invent new flavours of ice lolly" so my ridiculously over-priced lolly kit will be getting plenty of use. These ones went down well tonight: chocolate and strawberry.

The reason the countdown starts at 9 is that we have just nine sleeps until the holidays - woo hoo!