What have you doing in the last week of your summer holidays?

It's time for a little catch-up on what our family's been doing. 

Last Monday we had the last full day as a family on holidays. We went to Toshimaen, the local(ish) amusement park I mentioned back here.

Toshimaen, except that last Monday it was totally packed with people.

We invited one of our 12 y.o.'s friends. He's 13 and quite a bit taller than our son, so it looked like we had four sons! I'm glad I don't, actually. I spent a good portion of an extremely hot day running around checking out where they all were. They were (somewhat predictably) difficult to get out of the multiple pools at the end of the day. We were stuffed (Aussie for exhausted) by the time we arrived home.

On the train platform, prior to journeying home. This was only slightly posed!

David started back part-time (and unofficially) at school the next day. He's been doing some private tutoring at school, plus starting to organise things for the start of school next week. So it was back to me and three boys at home. The temperatures were in the mid to high 30s (90-100 F). So no one really felt like doing anything. Because of our big day on Monday, I got away without doing much with the boys. Lots of Lego action. And I finished a second pair of shorts. We mostly just stayed home and kept a low profile for a couple of days. Though we did have some friends over for dinner on Tuesday. They're moving house. More about them soon.

By Thursday, though, the after effects of being out on Monday had worn off. And despite the temps still being very high we had to get them out of the house for some exercise. So we took the boys for a 15 minute ride down to a small shopping centre. The benefit of riding in the heat is at least you are fairly cool while riding! And when we got there we could enjoy the centre's air con! We had my husband's favourite treat – morning tea at a bakery. Then we did some shopping. 

The boys were pretty subdued, thankfully. Probably the heat and exhaustion from the days previous. I have to admit I was feeling pretty bad. The nights had been about 30-32 degrees. That morning I'd been partially awake from about 4.30am, hot and sweaty and unable to fully fall back asleep. But another reason for their lack of "shopping crazies" is that it is also a pretty subdued shopping centre. Somewhat minimalist, not too much lighting, loud music or in-your-face product display. Have you ever noticed that some shops really rev kids up?

We bought some new sneakers for the start of our eldest son's cross-country season. I found a t-shirt in one of my favourite colours (deep blue-green) and on special. And my husband investigated the optical store and ordered some replacement sunglasses (his were stolen at the amusement park). I checked out their frames – they have some pretty cool frames. My current frames are wearing badly. Do you remember how I had to have them replaced in Australia last year? Well the same thing is happening to these, the paint is flaking off. So, sometime in the next year I'll have to replace these frames, if I'm not to be wearing silver frames. Thankfully glasses seem to be cheaper here, cheaper even than when we're covered by insurance in Australia.

Well the ride home was okay, but boy were we hot when we arrived home! We turned the air con on and rode out the rest of the day inside. I think it hit 37.5 degrees in our room that day and come bedtime had barely cooled lower than 33. David and I camped that night in our lounge room on our new air bed.

The next day, Friday, David officially started back at school, doing a full day's work – meetings! The boys weren't really that nice. But then they often aren't on David's first day back at school. I think they subconsciously miss him. The big event of Friday was that the sky went very dark at around 9.30/10 o'clock. It seemed as though we were moving into night. Then the rain began. Gradually, ever so gradually it cooled down to the mid to low 20s. A drop of about 15 degrees Celsius from the day before! We slept so well on Friday night. I got 10 hours straight and it was wonderful not to wake up sweaty at 1am or even 7.30am!

Walking to church.

The weekend has been a pretty rambling one. Bits of this and that. The weather was so pleasant that I ramped up the big oven and baked some cookies. Mid afternoon we met our friends (mentioned earlier) over at their new house. They've bought a "handyman's dream" and are fixing it up. We encouraged them up with some of the Choc Chip biscuits and a little help with moving a couple of boxes out of the car into the house.

Today we walked to church because it was drizzling. Much drier to walk than ride in the rain and no point in driving, because there's no where to park our car.

Thankfully by the time the Sunday mid-afternoon crazies came on (the boys always go silly at about this time), the rain had ceased and I drove them out of the house down to the river-side park for some French cricket, confusing the locals no end! 

So, David is back to school tomorrow and we're back to getting by for the last three days of holidays. I think they have some Lego projects going on upstairs, so hopefully that will account for a good portion of time. And no, I'm not really counting the four sleeps that are left . . . after that I'll have to go and find out what I used to do when they were all at school. Did I sit twiddling my thumbs? Somehow I don't remember doing much of that.