Crazy Weather

How crazy has the weather been lately ? I don't think I have experienced anything like it. Ive lost count of how many mini tornadoes we have been struck by in the last 2 weeks. And the timing and precision of them is astounding. Generally they tend to strike 5 to 10 minutes before we need to leave for school or anywhere else we need to go, 5 to 10 minutes before dinner and 5 to 10 minutes before bedtime. And amazingly they are always seem to take the exact same path, through the puppet and musical instrument cupboard, and through the girls bedroom and somehow throwing all their clothes and every bit of paper in their room onto the floor. I keep watching the news to see if anyone else has been struck by these tornadoes but as of yet nothing. Unfortunately I haven't had any aid come to me from red cross, civil defence or any emergency agency. I have had a 3 man volunteer team say they will help but that help hasn't really been forth coming until today.

Today we struck by a full blown hurricane. It ripped through the house with extreme velocity. I picked up 12 bags of debris. Suddenly my volunteer clean up team arrived when I announced that all the debris in these 12 bags will be going in the rubbish bin. They got stuck in to cleaning everything up - it took them 40 minutes but they did a good job. And during that 40 minutes I managed to pull off my greatest achievement for the week - untangling 4 fishing rod things for the jitterbugs game we have - which the girls had wanted to play earlier but couldn't cause the rods were all tangled up - they were an absolute mess and it took me a whole 40 minutes to untangle them but I got there and there was a bit of fist pumping by myself when i had got them all undone.

Now even when Nikki is home - there is 2 things about our kids.
1. Keeping them in bed at night is a mission.
2. Moving them from in front of the TV is a mission.

So I came with a cunning plan. A plan so cunning you could say it was devised by a fox who went to oxford university and got a degree in cunningness.

 I decided we would have a sleep over in the lounge. Absolutely brilliant I thought. Have the kids in front of the TV in their sleeping bags and they wont move. Fantastic idea and started off brilliantly as the kids settled down to watch Happy Feet 2. I had it all timed so that it would finish in time for the All Black South Africa game. Well mummy made a mess of all that when she face timed us and then I lost control of the kids - they kept jumping around - being silly and just being crazy - couldn't get them to sit/lie still. So watching the 1st half of the rugby was crazy. And by this stage I was getting a little frustrated and I'm sure Mr Dempsey was to, as he had joined in watching the rugby. So just before half time I shut Luke in his room - and after much crying he eventually fell asleep behind his door. However I moved to quickly in trying to put him into bed and he woke screaming the house down - but I managed to get him settled and he fell asleep in my arms on the couch while we watched the 2nd half. Kate finally fell asleep as well. And in the end I had to turn the TV at half time of the aussie argentina game as I discovered that Jaimee was still watching it at 10:30pm  But we all spent the night in the lounge apart from Mr Dempsey who had gone home by this stage.


Sunday we managed to get to church although a little late. And the kids happily went off to kings kids and creche. And then we came home and had waffles for lunch.

Luke created a horse out of his waffle and he was walking it around his plate saying "look daddy, horse" and giggling away.

We finally got to watch all of Happy Feet 2 that afternoon before the kids spent the early evening with Grandad and Granma at Elim,
So I had a just under 2 hours to myself so I decided to watch The Bourne Supremacy - but by the time I had got home from the dropping the kids off - organised my dinner - I only got in an hour of watching it with the surround sound volume full up loud.  It was fantastic being able to watch some with sound real loud. Unfort I had to watch the 2nd half with it turned now so as not to disturb the kids as by this stage they were home in bed.

Monday was my day off - and I had learnt from last week to do all the jobs on that day rather than keeping them on their original days. IE washing sheets from the beds is on a Tuesday but that was just chaos last week so I did them on Monday instead - made things a bit easier I must say. However Monday is baking day so my little helper and I got stuck in to it. We started off with muffins - I started putting the ingredients into a bowl and Luke just stirring - I didn't even have to tell him anything he knew exactly what to do. But then we got to adding the chocolate chips. A big grin appeared on his little face - he walked over to the drawer pulled out a little container poured himself some chocolate chips and disappeared - I didn't see him again after that - he ditched me half through the muffins to go eat chocolate chips.

 Anyway I made chocolate chip muffins, a gluten free chocolate cake and a lemon slice with a cornflake base instead of a biscuit base. Probably used to many cornflakes as it tastes more cornflakey than lemony. But still not to bad.

Its been a an ok week so far a few frustrations with my kids having painted on ears at the wrong moments in time - normally around bed time or in the mornings.
My children are definitely not morning kids. Kate and I had one big yelling match when I made her make her bed - she proceeded to tell me that I was the meanest daddy ever and that all I ever did was make them do jobs even though I have fed and cleaned up after the rabbits everyday, fed the cats and fish, and set the table every night which are all their normal jobs - so they have pretty much had a holiday on the job front since mummy has been away - their only real job is to get dressed eat breakfast, make their bed and do their bible study. Not much ask but for some reason it is a real mission for them and its a battle every morning, though Jaimee was great this morning when she had pretty much done everything by 7am so she had started well but of course that lead to more time for the hurricane to strike.

We had a great dinner eat at the Dempseys on Tuesday night (My hot date night - unfortunately Mr Dempsey and all the kids were there). Now either I don't feed my kids enough or they don't like my cooking but they got stuck into the food that Vicki Lee had cooked them - I don't think I ever seen Jaimee and Kate eat so much - especially meat as they went to town on the corn beef and Luke was into the broccoli - loves broccoli that boy.  Though surprisingly Luke didn't eat all his ice-cream which is extremely unusual for him - normally he eats 2 scoops in 5 seconds flat and still wants more.
But it must be my cooking they don't like as we had meatballs on Monday night which Linda Parsons had kindly made us and the kids monstered those down as well.

Oh well that's it for now - I might try and sneak in 1 more blog before Nikki returns home and I can officially retire. Less than a week to go - wahoo !!!