Matthew's 4th Birthday, and other updatey stuff!

Time for an update! I meant to do a further update on Benjamin, but time just passes, and at least I got a couple of catch-up posts done for him fairly recently! :) He'll feature in this post plenty, so I think that'll be okay! Look, see? Here he is with his head in my camera bag, lol! ;) He can't resist my camera bag if I leave it lying around!



Matthew turned 4 on June 14th! So now my littlies are 5,4,2 and 11 months. Benjamin only has a couple of weeks to go until his first birthday - I can't believe it! In some ways it feels normal, and like a full year really HAS gone by. At other times it's just surreal. We never did get around to purchasing a 2010 calendar, so we're being really, er, frugal (or just lazy?!) and re-using our 2009 wall calendar, which didn't have much written in it for last year anyway. We have had to cross out the number dates and re-write them as they're a day different, but it is serving us well enough for now! MUST buy a 2011 one before the year is out, hehe! Anyway, when I am pregnant, I put my weeks of pregnancy as a number in a circle through the entire pregnancy on my wall calendar - it makes for easy reference. It's sometimes a strange feeling to flip over to July to check things for next month and see "Baby Due!!" on the 8th, haha! ;) Or writing my little circled "16" (I'm 16 weeks pregnant today, yay!!) and seeing 38 in a circle a few days before it. Or seeing "20 week scan!" written in for July 28th (which is when our big scan is - so excited!!) and then on July 30th it says, "Register birth 10am today" hehehe! We really should use a different calendar for each year! Apart from anything else, it can get confusing when you're pregnant both years and have various midwife appointments written on there! ;)

Sooo, our summer birthdays are in full swing! I have some photos from Matthew's birthday - some very obviously "birthday" ones, and others of the boys just playing together. To save time I am going to post them through Blogger instead of uploading them to Photobucket and then editing their size, etc. The only thing I don't like about that is that the photos are too small for my liking, but you can click on them to make them bigger. And then they're humongous! Oh well! It's much quicker and since it's a weekday - OH! I mentioned this at my pregnancy blog but not here - I am currently not using my laptop during the week. I use it at weekends, but I am finding that if I switch it on in the evenings, I have ZERO willpower and end up staying up waaaaay too late. In the week this affects, well, everything really. But mainly school, so I need to stop. I tried to just STOP, but apparently I have no willpower whatsoever! So I did a little trial of not using it at ALL during the week, and what a difference it made! I went to bed at 10.30 or 11pm every night (embarrassingly, I go to bed HOURS later than that usually, when I am doing allll the things I do online in the evenings), was obviously more refreshed in the day times, and got great things done in the evenings instead. I felt more relaxed during the evenings, spent time with God - praying, reading the Bible and such - wonderful! I read books that I have been meaning/needing to read for ages and just not finding the time. I did a lot of school preparation and planning, and actually did some tidying and decluttering too, while listening to worship music! It felt GREAT! In the daytime, Neil works (or trains to eventually work!) on the main computer which is in the kitchen (out of the way of the boys since it's gated off). When he nips to the toilet or something, I tend to RUN to the computer and quickly check or update Facebook, or check my email, hehe! So I do get a LITTLE internet time in during the week.

Some evenings, maybe once a week, I have something I need to research or check online, usually to do with school, or a question that I need to ask at a forum. So then I switch on my laptop and do what I need to do, but inevitably I end up staying up later than I should on those evenings, because I wander on to do a ton of other stuff that I hadn't planned to do! I have just NO willpower when it comes to computer use! :S

Tonight after I prepared school for tomorrow, I talked with Neil about ordering the next year's Right Start Mathematics curriculum for Arthur, and he gave me the go-ahead so I got out my laptop to do that! Exciting!!!! :D And now, well, it's getting late so I should go to bed soon, but I really wanted to update here just to vent some excitement about school stuff, and then I realised that I still hadn't updated about Matthew's birthday, or posted photos that I had planned to post, and here we are! ;)

Anyway - back to where I was before this aside! So I am uploading the photos through Blogger as it's quicker and I need to cut some corners since it's a week night!

Here's Matthew opening presents, with various excited little onlookers! :) His favourite present was the matchbox cars he had asked for. He didn't even want anything else, just "new toy cars", so he was thrilled with those! He was also really excited about a Thomas the Tank Engine activity book (that's what he's grinning at, and what the other boys are looking at with him) and some stickers. He got a Playdoh spaghetti factory set from my parents and tons of books, which he loved too. We also got him a Melissa and Doug "get up and go games" set - the sandwich stacking one. Arthur LOVES it, and Matthew seems to like it too, but he would rather play with his cars so far! ;) Neil made our card (from us and the other boys) - we usually try to make the birthday cards ourselves for our little ones, themed to something they like. Neil made a (very good!) triceratops card! Matthew was soooo pleased with it when he opened it! :)

I can't remember what else he got... not many other things, because we are purposely trying to downscale birthday gifts this year. Partly we have very little money, and also we have a lot of children! ;) We also don't want them to expect piles of gifts - a few carefully chosen ones from us and books and a special present from my parents is plenty. My grandparents give money which we usually don't spend on yet more toys - more likely clothes that he needs or just save it. Neil's side of the family either just send cards or actually don't acknowledge our children's birthdays much at all. Which is a whoooole 'nother matter that I struggle with, but that's not for now! ;)

Anyway! I digress yet AGAIN! Photos! :)







Later in the morning the boys were all playing with cars at the window - they like to have a "shop" on the windowsill and one of them will be a car "deliverer", another will run the shop, and another will collect and drive away cars! :) They love this game and will play it for absolutely ages, before someone starts to get a bit too bossy and then it all falls apart with arguing and screeching and all that fun stuff. But they generally play ever so well and are absolute best friends. They were extra excited to include Matthew's new cars in the game that morning! Those were mostly under Matthew's control though! ;)

Look at my biggest boy! Arthur is looking so much taller and "older" to me lately. I can't believe he'll be six later this year! He insisted on wearing one of Matthew's tops that day, which is why the sleeves aren't quite long enough! ;) He is lining cars up on our (very battered!) sofa arm. A certain tiny boy is so eager to join in and be "one of the boys" lately, trying to drive cars along the floor and get involved in their games wherever he can!




No shortage of tiny helpers for Arthur here! :)




I happened to catch Matthew spontaneously giving Benjamin a kiss on the hand as they were playing! Oh my heart strings!!! :)



Benjamin crawled off in the end for some personal practise time at "brumming" cars, since he wasn't getting in on much of the action with the big boys! ;)



Birthday Cake!!! :D




Matthew asked specifically for a chocolate motorbike cake and it had to somehow involve Smarties (the British chocolate ones, not the US sour ones!) - I had noooo idea how I was going to make a motorbike out of chocolate cake! I googled but didn't really come up with much that looked do-able. In the end I found a simple card-topper at eBay in the shape of a motorbike. I used the picture of it on my computer to draw the parts of the motorbike and then cut out coloured fondant to those shapes. I reeeally dislike ready coloured icing! It's practically toxic! But I didn't know how to make an exciting looking cake without some bright colours, and it was a special occasion after all! :) I didn't let Benjamin eat any of it though. It was stuck onto the cake with normal chocolate icing so I just peeled off the fondant and he ate the rest! :)

I could not believe how enthusiastic Benjamin was about the cake! He has never really had proper birthday cake before, icing and all. I had planned to make a simple plain sponge cake for his birthday, but the photos say it all really - I am pretty sure if he could talk, he would be requesting chocolate cake with chocolate icing for his birthday cake, so that's what I'll make him! ;) Everyone seems to request that, so I end up making it for every birthday cake I do! I can make other cakes but only Neil prefers plain cakes to chocolate, so it doesn't happen often! Here's Benjamin loving the cake! :)



I'm thinking Nathan liked it pretty well too, hehe! ;) He likes the icing best - look at it just hanging off his face, haha! He kept mumbling, "Delicious cake!" as he was piling into it! Nathey LOVES him some cake...



Benjamin eating his cake again, pausing for a drink, and then reaching for Matthew's, hehehe!





We were going to offer Matthew the choice of going to the zoo late morning for the rest of the day, or just a typical run about at the park, but Neil overheard Arthur giving him more options than we'd considered at 6am, before we'd even had chance to talk to Matthew about it! He was saying, "Now Matthew, for your birthday outing, do you want to go to Bird World? Or the farm? Or the park? Or..." and so it went on! Surprisingly (and somewhat thankfully!), Matthew told Arthur that he wanted to go to the park. Arthur was most disappointed, lol! Matthew is such an easy-going little boy with no great urge to do exciting or unusual things just because he can. He always enjoys them, but he loves his "norm". When it came time for us to go to the park in the afternoon, he didn't want me to go! I usually put Benjamin to bed for a nap in the afternoons and that's often when Neil will take the boys to the park for their run-and-climb-and-explore. So I stay home with Benjamin since he's napping. Matthew knew we could go with them (I would have kept Benjamin up since it was a special day) but he still just wanted his usual outing which he enjoys so much, with Daddy and the boys. They went and had a great time, and came home in time for cake in place of afternoon snack! :) We sang Happy Birthday and Matthew blew out his FOUR candles before we even got to "Happy Birthday dear Maaaa-thewww!", hehe! He just couldn't wait! ;) We did keep on singing in the dark all the same though, to the end of the song!

We plan to go to the zoo over the summer but NOT when it's too hot, as that does not strike me as much fun! None of us are overly great with hot weather, especially me (and especially when pregnant!) and we're having a run of hot weather right now, so we're waiting. We ARE going to go to the seaside while it's hot though! :) We haven't done that in a long time - Nathan and Benjamin have never been! Arthur and Matthew have been asking if we can go to the beach this summer, and we have agreed. We plan on several day trips if the weather is good enough, ideally over the next few weeks before the schools break up for summer and the beaches get more crowded on nice days. I can't tell you how much I LOVE homeschooling for opportunities like this! A husband out of work is also helpful! ;) But we can literally hit the beach or the zoo or anywhere else, at any time of year, avoiding the crowds, any time we want to because the children don't go to school (and get cheaper rates everywhere too!). And I love that particular perk! :) Right now we are hoping to go on Friday, since it works for us, low tide is getting towards a better time to coincide with us being at the beach, and the weather is going to be hot. Hot enough so that we'd be better off out of London and at the slightly cooler coast for the day. I will absolutely take my camera but I don't know how well I'll do at actually capturing photographs of my little ones experiencing the sun, sand and sea, since I am likely to have my hands extremely full chasing after my sweeties and playing with them! :) But I'll definitely try to get some memories on camera.

I have a ton more I wanted to write - especially a long-overdue entry about how homeschooling is going, and what we're doing, and what I am planning! I sooooo want to write about it! For now, I will have to go to bed. I am glad to have updated about Matthew's birthday! Benjamin has three teeth!!! Two top middles and one bottom middle. No sign of more coming for now. His new toothy smile melts my heart every single time he flashes it at me (a thousand times a day)! I adore that baby boy! I have pics of him ready to post but no more time now. I'll try again soon! :)