Roundup, Now that I have time to catch my breath

Remind me how I managed to fit my life in when I worked full time, will you, because I can't for the life of me work it out. It's been a busy old week or so.

The boys went off to their friend's house for his birthday extravaganza last Saturday. From 2pm until 8pm. Woo hoo! Six hours of freedom! Which we used to the full by......hanging out in the house, doing a bit of shopping and...erm, that's it. Never let it be said that we don't know how to party.

On Sunday my ex-brother-in-law came over to see the boys and we ended up going over to the park for a kick about with a football. Husband, who is violently allergic to football, played his usual position of team photographer. He is still getting to grips with our new video camera so made good use of the time by filming us all lurching around in the mud. Do you know anything that is worse than seeing yourself on film playing football with your children in all your ungainly, wobbly glory? Because I do. Seeing yourself playing football IN SLOW MOTION. Every flabby ripple captured for posterity. Husband did at least have the good grace (ie good sense) to delete the worst bit. At least, he said he did......

Since the children were on half term holiday (half term already!) they spent Monday and Tuesday morning with my sister in law and her partner, which the boys absolutely loved. A trip was taken to Ikea for breakfast - apparently, Ikea does really good breakfasts. Who knew? I thought they only did bookshelves called things like Blegvast. Anyway, Second Born managed to score a couple of new cuddly toys to add to the 394 he already has sharing his bed. A sort of patchwork-y guinea pig which has been christened Marvin, and a very convincing plush brown rat which has been named Katrina and which is now married to his rat glove puppet, Ratty Guy. Katrina didn't seem to have much of a choice in the matter and I'm a bit concerned that I have inadvertently become involved in an arranged marriage. She seems happy enough mind you, since as a newcomer she is at the top of the cuddly toy pile that SB sleeps with.

First Born's birthday was this week, on Wednesday. He is 11, which I find hard to believe. He asked for and received an iPod as a birthday present. We are now firmly in that area where children's birthday presents come in very very small boxes, don't fill your living room with acres of coloured plastic but do cost enormous amounts of money. I spent a fair bit of time putting FB's preferred music on to the iPod (having first wrangled iTunes back on to a new computer) and that was an interesting experience. I hadn't quite realised what weird music taste we have incubated in our son. His playlist at the moment includes: Chucky Danger Band (indie band from PEI), Kraftwerk, Kaiser Chiefs, Great Big Sea, Gary Numan, Boney M, The Beatles, Bugs Bunny and Friends Sing the Beatles, Rainbow, Ganymede and Johnny Cash. Diverse is the word I think.

I also had to make his birthday cake. This year the requested design was a suicidal bunny. Anyone with a son around the age of 10 won't be surprised at this, but I appreciate the rest of you might be a tad disconcerted. "The Book of Bunny Suicides" is a cartoon book much in favour with young boys at the moment. Hence FB's cake featured a cartoon rabbit with an arrow through its head. And a certain amount of red icing blood. He loved it and insisted that his slice should have the rabbit's face on it. I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

And that brings us to this evening. We have been watching the first episode of the new Billy Connolly series where he travels around the North West Passage. But for the first episode he starts out in Halifax, visits Lunenburg, New Brunswick, Cape Breton and then on to Newfoundland. Husband and I have alternately been shouting "We've been there, that's the scarecrow farm!" and just sighing at the sight of bits of our favourite part of the world. Roll on July. I might have to go and console myself with a slice of suicidal bunny.