sand paintings

I knew as soon as I woke up this morning that I could no longer ignore the washing... it creeps up walls, in almost every room of the house. How? I dont know, I seem to wash every do da day. I also knew that a hardcore vacuum was needed so I planned for a "cleanery day".Trouble is, cleanery days are not fun for my kids and often leave me feeling like I have neglected them. Its so hard getting the balance, isnt it??

So today, I decided that we spend the day "together". Working together, cleaning together, just together.
We started with an outdoor breakfast, together. Now normally I read the paper whilst having the thirty second breakfast, but sitting outside in the sunshine with my two littlest loves was really peaceful. I told them the things were going to do together.

I then had Amahli help me load up the washing machine and carry out the first load to the line. Now, the thing with having children help you clean is that it takes a good deal longer to achieve anything. Actually, it takes FOREVER. But today had no time line, and so we went inside and found some wool and I constructed her a little line of her own to hang some things on.

She absolutely loved doing this :) She was so funny to watch too. She would pick up a tea towel, shake it, talk to it, then place it on the line, just so. I then taught her how to manipulate a peg to get it to stay on the tea towel. This ended up being such a great self help activity for her as well as being the start of learning some really great life skills.

And so proud when she had done it!

Jared then came and helped me make the beds... I do use the term "help" lightly here as he was far more keen on testing whether they were still as jumpy as they used to be.
I then attempted to vacuum whilst the two of them attempted to ride the poor machine whilst I flung it around the room.. no photos here unfortunately ,as it was a sight to see :)
Time to create, just before lunch, I grabbed out the coloured sand I had stashed away in the cupboard that caught my eye yesterday. We made this ages ago but keeps forever, so we got out glue and paper and made some great pictures with it. Amahli was keen on dripping her glue today, watching it run all over the page. Jared was more sedate with a simple painting before sprinkling sand all over it.

This craft is definitely one to be done in tubs and probably outside. Having it in the tub allows them more freedom as you wont spend the whole time holding their hand so it doesnt go everywhere... I even put the sand container in the tub so they dont have far to travel with a loaded fist of coloured disaster :)

It was such a cruisy morning.. full of cuddles and ( need I say it again?) togetherness... blew that crappy bluesy feeling far away from me.

Just what I needed :)