Category: Family

Beautiful Paintings

Published on by Margaret

It was D’s birthday last Saturday and the grandchildren painted some beautiful pictures to give him.

This is by E age 6 – smiley spiders and pretty flying things.

The one below by G age 5. He likes football (as does his Dad and Grandad) – no.8 is Wayne Rooney (although my footballing experts tell me he’ll be no. 10 next season).

And this sparkly one by M age 18 months.

These photos don’t really do them justice, in particular the colours in M’s painting look a bit pale but in reality it’s really lovely.

The Sleep Over

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

At the weekend we went to stay with our son (P) and family and were greeted excitedly by our grandchildren and G (grandson), exclaimed “You’re having a sleepover and, Grandad – you’re sleeping with me!” Normally we don’t stay over night as we only live an hour’s drive away. The reason we were staying over was that P and G were getting up at the crack of dawn to go to a carboot sale and we didn’t fancy getting up before 5am to get there in time. As it was, we were awake when they went out, as was G, who promptly got into bed with us. Not long after granddaughter no. 2 (M) woke up, so in she came as well, closely followed by E (granddaughter no. 1). After lots of wriggling about, giggling and “I want to watch TV” (not allowed until after breakfast and washed and dressed) we all got up and had breakfast.

The rain had threatened on Saturday, but had kept away. It had been pouring down all week though and the carboot was cancelled and P & G had to bring all the stuff back. We looked through the carboot book boxes and came home with a pile of books (I can never resist books). Later in the morning we took E and G to Sunday School, sorry Junior Church, where appropriately the story was about the foolish man who built his house on the sand and the wise man who built his house on the sand – and the rains came down etc!!

After that we went to McDonald’s where the main attraction was the free Shrek that came with the children’s meal. McDonald’s is really quick and the children seem to like eating out of cardboard boxes and paper bags, sitting on small chairs specially designed for them. G said he wanted a burger, but big sister E said he didn’t like it when he had one before. G replied that it was only the middle he didn’t like and E replied in a teacher voice “You can’t eat just the bread, G”. So they both had fish fingers. We all had fun with the Shreks, although E would really have preferred the Gingerbread Man. When you press a button he says, “I’m an Ogre”, another press and he burbs magnificently – G loved that! So all the way home we had both Shreks repeating “I’m an Ogre”, burping and saying “Oh My” (at least that’s what I think it sounded like), with both children copying it with the sound effects and us grandparents in fits laughing. Here’s Shrek on the pile of books that came home with us.

The books behind Shrek are (from the bottom up)

  • Into the Box of Delights: a history of Children’s Television by Anna Home – lots of nostalgia here
  • Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide – to help me decide what to read next
  • Big Chief Elizabeth: how England’s Adventures gambled and won the New World by Giles Milton – I hope it’s as good as his Nathaniel’s Nutmeg
  • Faithful Unto Death by Caroline Graham – a Midsomer Murders book, because I’ve never read any and I like the TV series.
  • Four Ian Rankin books – The Hanging Garden, Resurrection Men, the Black Book, and Set in Darkness – I hope they’re not as gory as Rebus, the TV series!