A mixed bag weekend

Yesterday morning started off with a party for a little friend of ours and then we went off camping for the night with some friends. The kids had a great time with their wee 2yr old friend and kept themselves all happily amused. I was really encouraged that Danielle was comfortable going off with the other kids and their friends dad down to the playground without me. She has never done this before without a family member, but was totally happy and confident to do that. It's a big breakthrough for her to be ok about it. She's also starting to take herself off to the toilet on her own (despite being out of nappies for months, I have had to suggest/take her there for all of that time - yay, another little step towards independence). Her talking is coming along as well, and now expressing herself well, as well as engaging us in her conversations and is seeking to learn and ask about things - another step forwards!

Back to camping...once dinner was done, Nathan was off riding around the campground on his bike (glad we took that with us!) while Danielle came and snuggled up with me on my lap and nodded off to sleep about 8pm. I was able to transfer her to our friends bed (they had a cabin whereas we were tenting). Much later on, Nathan finally decided at 9.45pm that he was zonked and had done enough riding in the dark and climbed into his sleeping bag and went to sleep on Simon's lap (we were sitting out on the grass outside of the cabin) until we all wandered off to bed about 11pm.

This morning was spent down at the beach, Nathan was on his boogie board and trying out his newfound frisbee skills.

Back home around lunchtime had us all shattered, so a trip down to the video shop and we got out Peter Pan which Nathan really enjoyed.

Nathan then brought some pens and paper over to me to help him with doing some writing. He wanted to copy words from one of our library books.

The kids helped me make dinner (it was pizza and movie night) by opening up the can of tomatoes before being bored with that idea. I asked Nathan to pour half the can into the pot and his eye was spot on!

At bedtime we finished off our latest Magic Tree House book on Leonardo da vinci which led to a few questions about his flying machine, inventors, Mona Lisa, Italy and the year Leonardo was born.