They are lucky that each weekend their Father comes to collect them and they go to spend 2 nights with him at his house, providing them with a little break by the sea, some much needed 'Dad' time and a few days away from their rather frazzled and stressed out mum.
While with me this past week the children have been spending their carefully saved Birthday, Easter and or pocket money (not forgetting the just because we bumped into grandma money) they have quite cleverly bought themselves an array of little treats which while providing a shopping trip where not to much damage is done to my purse they have learned to choose toys or games which they can play together or to pool their money and buy something to share between them (in theory anyway)
They have been lucky enough to visit or be visited by many family and friends and to cook with their (as mentioned before) frazzled and rather stressed out mum.
Of all my children my middle son is my budding chef. At 8 years old he loves to watch cookery programmes with or without me and models himself (jokingly I hope- or I could be in trouble as he gets older) on being a cross between Heston Blumenthal (for his scientific and experimental approach to cooking-if there's a possibility of an explosion he's over the moon and he was quite disappointment when I explained that no Tesco do not sell items like liquid nitrogen ) Gordon Ramsey (for his temper and bad language-not that i tolerate either) and Jamie Oliver (for what my son calls the bish bash bosh approach to cooking) but his absolute favourite cookery programmes are the American ones you can watch on channels like the food network 'outrageous food' and 'diners, drive-ins and dives' and currently showing on the Dave channel 'Man v's Food' (my personal favourite right now too)
This food enthusiasm means that given the chance he'd have us all sitting down to 40lb steak and cheese sandwiches which we must finish within 60 minuets in order for our photo to go on the wall and to win a t-shirt and so it is with a little regret I have had to try and tone down his list of ingredients and teach him to make the basics which he may one day find useful if not slightly boring.
This Easter holiday has seen us make our own marshmallow (which lead to marshmallow iced cupcakes) Our own Easter eggs (which had a variety of little extras -his butterscotch pieces in milk chocolate being my favourite) chocolate cornflake bites, fudge, an Easter bunny cake and extreme burgers (there was nothing special about the burgers them selves, in fact they were shop bought, it was the way they were presented on the plate- HUGE is an understatement).
An enormous amount of chocolate has been consumed by the boys and the boyfriend this Easter holiday be it melted and moulded at home home or one of the many ones that have been given by relatives on an Easter visit, a few have been put on top of my wardrobe out of reach to try and eke out the rate of consumption and its on a rainy miserably cold Easter Monday that I write this watching the boys and the boyfriend have an afternoon nap full up on chocolate...... well its only once a year its not going to do any harm to let them feast on a bit more tomorrow.
