Happy Easter

Hope you have not had too much chocolate this holiday time?
Were you lucky with the weather? We had overcast but hot and humid temps, can't believe actually that our fine weather has lasted this long this year, ok I do realise that some have had snow this Easter. Yea for you, I do remember having snow one Easter when I lived in England.

Seems in this family we have been very lucky with the bunny, we seem to have bunnies running around all over the place!

Ok, we had 1 lot of chocolate that wasn't a bunny but this one was great as it came with money for ice creams.

 And just in case we didn't have enough chocolate, then we had a box of mini chocs to see us through!

This is all that is left of one of Alex's bunnies, it came with a little Kinder Surprise to inside, so he was determined to get the toy out, this of course entailed him having to eat the bunny!

Happy Easter to you all.

Tears at Easter

My 2 gorgeous little boys woke up this morning at the caravan.
Apparently they were very lucky in that the bunny left them some chocolate on their beds.

Grandma also gave them some chocolate but they had to work for this by doing a treasure hunt, more on that tomorrow.
However when the hunt had finished they proudly showed me what they had got this morning from the bunny, then they raced upstairs to my bed.
I followed questionably as I had no idea what they were going up to find?
They were pulling my bed to pieces apparently wanting to know where my egg was that the bunny had left me this morning?

It broke my heart to have to stand there and tell them "The Easter Bunny didn't leave mummy an egg this morning!"
Ben was quite shocked "But mummy he left ours at the end of our bed and daddy's too, didn't he leave you one too?"
"No I answered"

Then I came downstairs and tried to explain to Steve that they were upstairs trying to find my easter egg from the bunny, that had not arrived!

It broke my heart them having to realise that I didn't receive anything this year from the Bunny.
Such a shame they didn't realise that I didn't get an egg last year either or the year before that either!

So nice of them to think about me anyway?

Easter

Yes I know, it is not there yet. I also know that we have at least 7-8 weeks to go.
However you may have noticed that Hot Cross Buns are already out and about.
They are in the supermarkets and the bakeries.

Luckily for me, I do not like dried fruit, so hot cross buns can come and go as far as I am concerned.
Sadly for me Bakers Delight do Chocolate Hot Cross Buns with oodles of chocolate chips in them and zero dried fruit in them!!

And yes as it sounds they are devine.
Just out from under the grill with butter melting on them....oh gosh my mouth is watering already and I only just finished some for breakfast this morning!

There are more chocolate chips in them than you can count and they are not too sweet.

So if you want to try a Hot Cross Bun that has no fruit in it, then check them out.

P.S. I wasn't asked to try these out. I am just telling you about them because I love them.

Easter

The boys woke at 6.30 and totally forgetting the fact that a bunny may have visited, they proceeded to watch a movie in the caravan.

However, by 7.15 they had been to visit a friend’s caravan and suddenly remembered who should have visited. So they started to tear the place to pieces.
They came and told us sleeping wide awake big people that the bunny had missed them out and had not visited. Then with the help of their friends proceeded to tear the place to pieces even more on the ever determined quest of finding some chocolate eggs!

However, Ben had requested that we could do an Easter egg hunt like last year. Unfortunately he seemed to have forgotten this part so early in the morning.
I however, was on the ball and had the hunt all sorted, just not laid out ready to go. So while Steve calmed herded the roaring crowd, I quickly ran around the park and laid the said trap.

We then let the boys loose to see what was discovered. We first let them know that maybe the bunny had left the eggs in the car. This lead to them finding the puzzle start but for some reason Ben had it in his head that this was for a treasure hunt and not for eggs, so stepped over it and carried on looking for eggs. When questioned he said it was for a hunt, which we then had to mention that usually a hunt had prizes.........like possibly eggs? This hit the spot and suddenly they were on a hunt mission.

After sorting the clue and finding many others they found the lost eggs. They even seemed to forget that the bunny had been late in delivering them anyway. They also seemed to have not noticed that they had run up and down the campsite at least 4 times and were now using loads of energy! Wow mums are so sneaky sometimes!

The rest of Easter has been lovely, a nice relaxing chillin’ time at the caravan with friends.

A lot of card games have been played in the last 4 days.

The main one being “Phase 10”, a Rummy based card game with a twist. You can play with 2-6 players and the more you have the longer the game and the more frustrating it becomes but man is it good. It has kept many of us occupied for many hours this last weekend.

Leading on from this, many have been playing “Rummikub”, a tiled based card game. Again, I love this game and so look forward to being able to teach the boys when they are slightly older.

The other one that we have played is “Skip-Bo”, another basic card game that is suited for the children; well at least Ben at almost 8 has been enjoying it and also learning about strategy. I think maybe we have started off his love affair with card games and how much fun they can be.

I also had the pleasure of teaching my boys how to play “clock patience” this weekend and now they both keep getting out a pack of cards to play on their own.

However given the current state of the weather, anyone know of any ducks that want a new home? We have enough water for them and have you got an umbrella to go with that? Yes it has decided that raining is the best possible way to ensure everyone gets very wet and stays home.

Although whilst at the caravan I don’t mind the rain, ok the caravan is not very big and so 4 people stuck inside does have its moments, but it is so much fun watching the poor campers trying so hard to pack everything up without everyone getting too wet! Whilst also trying to explain to the kids why they have to stay sitting in the car whilst mum and dad pack everything up? And that ‘no’ they can’t have another ice cream whilst they sit and wait!
Such fun to watch.

Hope you Easter break has been as enjoyable as ours and that you didn’t get too wet and the kids didn’t get too sick from excess chocolate consumption!

Fall Time

Happy Easter to everyone.
Hope you are not eating too much chocolate? Ok well you eat what you want and regret it later!

We have had a lovely weekend at the caravan, shame Steve has to return to work so we go home tomorrow.
I do hope everyone in New Zealand enjoyed their extra hour in bed this morning, if you were able to get one, when the clocks fell back for winter.
I can't believe we have got to that time of year already?
We are now in April, the colder evenings are setting in and we are getting that much closer to Alex starting school.
Man life certainly races by when you are not watching!

Holiday

We are currently having school holidays at the caravan, well at least I am with the boys, Steve is at home working.
Feel a little like a WAG (wives and girlfriends) as currently at the site there are several families here without husbands, as they are back home working. The pool yesterday was filled with mums and kids but no dads!
The weather has been kind to us and the kids are spending the whole time outside running around and riding bikes. I am loving that because I have never had so much time on my own and not had to worry about what they are up to or had to come up with entertainment continuously.
The other side of that coin is the fact that by 7pm everyone is so tired they fall asleep very easily and sleep most of the night. It was 7am when we all woke this morning. My type of holiday.

I have noticed, however, that due to being away my blogger reading list is mounting up each day. Of course I have to pay to use the computer here, so I have a whole heap of blogs to catch up on when I get home!

Over the Easter weekend the campsite was full and we managed to get several games of cricket going. Well the best you can get when the average age is about 6 yrs old! But anyway, everyone that joined in had a blast and seeing as one of the games lasted for 3 hours! it was just a continuous rolling game. People came and went, parents dealt with kids and still there was always someone to keep the game playing. The kids had a blast, but then so did all the parents that joined in. We had some very budding cricket players in our midst. Some good throwers. Watch out Black Caps we are grooming the next intake for you!

Hoep you Easter has been as much fun as ours?

Holidays

Happy Easter to you all.

Hope you have a good holiday for however long you have available.

Hope you have fun at the egg hunts you attend and don't end up gorging on too much chocolate!

Rafting

At the caravan this Easter it was obvious that moral was a little low between the people who had been there a while. We got told that usually everyone was chummy with everyone else and that there was usually activities put on for the kids etc.

So one of the regulars had decided a couple of weeks previous that we need something happening at Easter to bring everyone back together. So he organised a raft race.

He was only really able to talk to 2 other people about this so there were only 3 teams but I think it sort of worked.

The rules were very simple, 3 people per team, 1 named captain. Raft must be inflatable rings held together with string but no permanent structures, oh and you needed some oars.

Rules: The raft is positioned out in the water with 2 team members, captain stands on the shore and when told must run into the water to their raft and off you go once round the marked course.

Nobody put up a sign or anything but word of mouth is pretty good as when someone let the air horn off at 9.45am on Easter Sunday to let the teams know they had to get ready in the water suddenly the people emptied the camp to come and watch. It was like they had all been possessed and all just filtered to the water. It was quite a sight.

Anyway the raft race was fun and even though it threatened to rain I think it went well. There was a cup at the end and champagne. They are hoping to do it again next year and make it an annual Easter thing.

So Grandad and Iain, get your planning caps on because Steve has told them that we will have a team for next year. So you are staying at Athenree next Easter because as new comers we need to kick their buts!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to you all.

Would you believe we have just been away for 5 days without one Easter egg!

We just don't seem to do Easter!

But what about the boys I hear you cry???

They don't know anything about it. We have never seemed to get into it.

Ben wouldn't eat the chocolate eggs if we did buy them for him and Alex doesn't know so why not make it wait a couple more years.

We do realise that things will change next year as Ben will be at school and there will be more knowledge coming his way from peer pressure.

He will know about every dam thing as it happens next year because someone at school will be talking about it or the school will be doing something at that time.

Oh well maybe we will do Easter Eggs next year or not!

Our Caravan

We have a caravan and it is on the site at the campsite waiting for us to go over tonight and spend 5 glorious days there.

I had the pleasure of going over yesterday and getting everything ready when they put it on the site.

So to give you a taster of our Easter plans, here are some pictures of the caravan, oh and girls, Cam does not come with the caravan, sadly he was just there to put it all together for us!