Wrapped

Better than yesterday. By far!! I was meant to get my hair cut this morning though but, lovely wifey that I am, offered to swap with Steve's appointment on Friday so that he could look less of a scruff for a business lunch tiday. And smart he looked!! Blimey.

So I took the boys to tots and instead of letting Steve take over so I could go home and do some work, I stayed. Quite happily, chatting - gosh I didn't realise how much I missed tots over the summer! Charley showed us how good he is at his new trick of climbing things while we were at tots, by climbing to the top of a play garage á la King Kong and giving me palpitations.

This afternoon I took the boys grocery shopping. Now, Steve and I spent an hour yesterday talking about food. We need to get back into meal planning and food budgetting because it's getting easier and easier to grab convenience foods because we're tired or haven't given any thought as to what to eat, but we can't afford to keep buying convenience. Plus, I'd rather know what I'm putting in my mouth and feeding my children with so would much rather make as much as I can from scratch. I've even looked up a mayo recipe this evening, now I've bought a new jar!

So our grocery shop this afternoon has been more veg, and less meat. And a fair bit of it will go towards batch cooking, or be cooked and frozen in portions to be used next week. It'll be interesting to see how our total food bill averages out over the month as a daily spend per head. I've not not bought treats either. There's a pot of strawberry lassi to make, and a pot of banana yoghurt to make - both of which I cannot WAIT to eat!

Steve spent four hours at his business "lunch" by which time I was running out of ways to occupy the boys at the supermarket. We'd done the shopping, we'd sat in the cafe with a drink and a teacake, Ben had played with his new lorry (we'll have the full collection soon), Charley played with a metal milk jug until he realised it made a hugely satisfying clung when he bonked it onto the table and then we played "stop Charley from hitting the milk jug onto the table" or rather I did; Charley played "avoid mummy's arm" instead.

So we headed outdoors where Ben's "create chaos and carry on" teeshirt made a couple of people laugh as he ran rings around a pillar, narrowly avoiding careering into trolleys and humans, until a very handsome smartly dressed fella pulled up and smiled at me and loaded my shopping into his car! Thankfully Ben and Charley recognised him although Ben wanted Mummy to put him in the car not Daddy :)

Steve was still stuffed from lunch so didn't want tea, nor did Charley especially being stuffed full of teacake, but Ben had his usual while I escaped for a shower. Turns out two tired kidlets cried and cried while I was in the shower, despite Daddy doing his best to cheer them up, so they went to bed early again quite happily and fell asleep quickly. Sadly Charley was not in the mood to be left so I have done very little work this evening, bound to the sofa by a tiny boy who thinks that Mama is the best bed there is.

Today's photo is a lovely cheesy one of the wee Bear and me, wrapped up ready to walk to the station to catch a bus to the supermarket. Camera attached to the gorillapod, pod wrapped around the stairgate, angle in approximately the right direction, self-timer, remember to look at the camera not at the mirror....