Long summer holidays part 1

I usually advocate that teachers dont really get those famed long summer holidays that everyone seems to think they do, that actually all they are doing is working from home, cleaning up their classrooms and grabbing a small bit of much needed destressing time before going back to the fray in September. As a supply teacher though, I dont have to clean up a classroom, make a zillion new labels for drawers, pegs, or books, or  write a terms worth of plans, neither (since most of a teacher's stress comes from the admin and paperwork side of stuff) do I need much in the way of destressing.  So this year I have been able to concentrate on just packing a lot of stuff into those few weeks.

Usually one of the first things I have to do when the holidays start though, is to catch up on all the housework I haven't done during term time. It usually means a deep clean and can take all the first week. This year was really no exception, it still needed doing but we were having builders in to put a new door/window in the front porch, and plaster it. No good cleaning if there was going to be brick dust all over the place.

Instead I spent a lot of time with Finley and Laura (although Laura, as a teacher, was doing all those things I meantioned in the first paragraph) and we did lots of fun stuff.

Here's what we packed in:

Laura and I took Finley to Westgate for his first ever experience of a sandy beach

.

Whats this strange stuff on my legs?

 

Why is Nanny burying me?

 

Ahh! Water, that I understand!

And my verdict?

Of course during August, as a country, we played host to the Olympics. Despite my total disgust at the ticket fiasco, and being adamant that I was not going to support it, I was hooked at the opening ceremony and wished I had got tickets. Kelly and Ollie had managed to get some for the Archery and the football, but despite bidding for just about everything that moved, Laura and Wayne had not won a single ticket. I was pleased to have Finley for them when they managed to get tickets to the Athletics when the gov. forced all the corp. seats to be re-issued and in tears when it turned out to be a 3 British Golds evening for them. 

 They got to explore the Olympic park

and generally have fun

before taking their seats

which offered them a pretty decent veiw of Jessica Ennis celebrating gold in the heptathlon

Gregg Rutherford making the longest jump to gain a gold medal

and best of all Mo Farah making his amazing gold winning  run in the 10,000m