After a bit of reading together in the morning the kids got busy...

While I was still wandering around in my pjs and eating breakfast, they were outside drawing with the chalks... (these are Danielle's ones, I wasn't able to snap Nathan's)

Then onto making paper boats...

 I found a little figurine made of plasticine that Danielle had been working on - a chicken riding on a wagon...

 Then down to our pond to float the boats (needs a bit more water lol)...

 I was making a calendula oil and the kids wanted to make their own as well - so we found some rose petals and lavender for them to infuse.

 They saw me rearranging my herbal supplies and decided to set aside space in each of their rooms for displaying all their special little bits and pieces along with their oil bottles.

 (Nathan's)

(Danielle's)

In the afternoon we headed off to play with friends, then after dinner off for a play at the park with dad.

A picture of Nathan "posing" with a piece of grass in his mouth "like in the old days mum!"

 And our chickens dust bathing in the kids sandpit...

Sunday was a fairly busy day! We were out of the house before 11am to drop Nathan and Simon off to a Kea's Birthday celebration - they had 4hrs of activities, games and fun. I dropped Danielle off to a birthday party and had a few hours to myself...

Late afternoon we headed to friends for a bonfire for a Beltane celebration and cooked our sausages and baked veges over the small bonfire. And finished off with toasted marshmallows of course!

 Monday we had a much needed day at home to catch up on outside chores. Simon worked on creating mulch which the kids helped with, and then helped me spread over the garden paths. Nathan headed off to Keas in the afternoon where they were meeting at a local confidence course and had a great time.

 Today we decided to have a "home day" to just hang out, relax and rebalance. I started off reading another of our Magic Treehouse books. This one was set in Shakespeare times. The kids then showed me a restaurant they'd set up. It cost a penny to get in (placed in the "box" which we found out was the where the original term "box office" came from) and on the floor are the "groundlings" and up on the desk are those sitting in the gallery.

 We then headed outside into the beautiful sunny day and gathered various flowers and greenery for a while.

 We spotted a monarch visiting our swan plants and she laid some eggs. Yippee! This was kind of exciting, as we'd missed this part of the cycle back in late summer when we discovered all our caterpillars.

 Nathan's catapault that he spent a bit of time figuring out how to make it work, how to create a "scoop"
 to hold the thing he wanted to catapault (originally tried to tie the black seed tray on and ended up used a soccer shin pad which has velcro straps) and...success!

 (all the straw over the grass was from last week's "nest making" attempts.

 He then was inspired to test the theory of things falling at the same rate no matter the size or weight (and challenged that theory by dropping an ice block wrapper and a balloon).

The kids were trying out the timer function on the camera...

After dinner Simon took them down for a walk to the dairy to buy some cream to have on our rhubarb crumble (first of the season).