An exhausting day off work

My nephews and neice go to a school that has already broken up for the winter holidays, but their Dad (my brother) is still busy being a GP, and their Mum, (sis in law) who is a teacher, works at a school that only broke up this afternoon, so I booked the day off quite a while ago to sit on all three kids for the day.

Being a nice Aunty, I offered to have them from last night, to make life easier for Katy - one less morning trying to get the kids to us and herself to work on time.

I had decided that it would be fun cook something with the kids.. they told me previously that they adore pizza, so rather than make cake I thought it would be fun to make pizza from scratch!! We started after breakfast at about 9am.

They all took turns in grating cheese, chopping up chunks of mozerella and pineapple, then squishing garlic in Elaines (the late, much missed DMILs) amazing garlic squisher.

Martha was very dissapointed we didnt use our amazing hand blender with attachements, that also used to belong to Elaine. Elaine and her sister (DAIL) called this hand blender the "UM" as many years ago, when I was up at their house I kept saying "please pass me the "Ummmm" as I couldnt remember what it was really called...and the name stuck!

I organised the cooking by getting the kids to take turns being "chef" whilst the other two read or played on the computer etc.

It kept arguments down to a minium and gave them all important parts to play in pizza making :-)

After we had everything ready, they decorated their pizzas and we popped them in the oven. That took us till about 11.45am, and we were due at the local swimming pool to meet up with a school friend and friends mum.

We had a great swim, then about 1pm ish Carlo (smallest one) and I got hungry, so we sat out in the cafe area, and ate our amazing pizza. Carlo said it was the best pizza he had EVER eaten (in his whole 5 years lol) the twins came along and enjoyed some too. They adored it, so I think we will have to make it again some time!

The twins went off with their friend from school (and mum) for the rest of the afternoon, and Carlo and I got back home at about 3pm (me pretty exhausted by now lol) We watched a little kids tv then went to collect Douglas from work.

Carlo is growing up very well.. he loves reading little bits from books, can count up to at least 40 and probably beyond with very few mistakes, and spent quite a while discussing the "sticky stuff" that held the flap of his book bag together, what shape the "sticky stuff" was in, and whether it could be made into a mouse shape. He thought the main problem with this was that a mouse tail is too think and curly :-) The new word for the day was VELCRO.

We took Carlo, and quite a bit of spare pizza back into the loving care of his mum then went home ourselves.

I had a wonderful, incredibly busy day. Being with all three kids can be a bit difficult at times, especially as the two boys tend to provoke each other and need to be separated, but mostly it was lovely to be with them, great to see them cooking, swimming and just being themselves :-)

Being an Aunty is great.. I can steal the kids, play mum/teacher/chef/swimming helper with them.. and then.. HAND THEM BACK!!!!!!!!

Im now looking forward to a quiet, restful day at work tomorrow lol!