We finished our chapter book and tossing up whether to re-read Heidi or Farmer Boy (for Danielle's benefit).

Last week a friend handed down to us a marble run set. The kids played with it almost non-stop for 3 days (aside from leaving the house for outings or me kicking them outside when the sun was shining).

A few days back the weather was gorgeous so we set out for a morning walk and to do a bit of medicinal plant foraging.

We attended a birthday party for a wee friend on Sunday (the kids reminisced about it being at our old playcentre). There was much preparation in making pictures and cards to take along.

I read them a library book yesterday that Nathan had picked up from the non-fiction area in the Puzzles and Riddles section that inspired Nathan to grab pen and paper and write a poem (or maybe it was prose or just freestyle poetry...I certainly don't know enough about literature!). It was a story about a magician being sent to find the philosopher's stone and the illustrations inspired his writing.

I was flying in the air
Softly and gently
And then I landed
On my feet

(Was spoken with plenty of drama, emphasis and specific pauses particularly between the last two lines). I heard him pacing the house with his page of writing raving like a mad poet lol.

While out in the garden in the afternoon we spotted a heaps of strawberries starting to grow quite big as well as our wild blackberry vines taking off. The kids decided that there were fairies looking after them and Nathan came up with the name Berry Fairies, so they proceeded to make them a little house to live next to the berries to keep an eye on things.

Today we headed off for a walk along the local river (Simon had switched his days off from work so we had him home today) and I got to forage some more.

Home for a smoothie with dandelion leaves this time (using our new glass straws).

After dinner Simon popped out to get The Princess Bride on DVD for the kids before I went off to work. Danielle fell asleep but Nathan really enjoyed it (but did observe a few scary bits that I'm not sure Danielle could have handled anyway).