NNEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!

That is approximately how fast April seems to have gone past to me.

We have been crazy busy what with the Easter holidays as well – it feels like we’ve barely sat down all month.

The start of the month was a bit of a sickly one for Arthur and I. Mostly Arthur – poor creature had virus after virus, followed by an ear infection leading to multiple visits to the doctors, getting sent home from school a lot (he kept getting to lunch time and then just falling asleep on the floor in the book corner with a fever) and, in a grand finale on our holiday trip, a perforated ear drum and all the ear-snot that goes with it. (I didn’t know ear snot was a thing. It is a thing. It’s gross and it smells funny.)

Tori was invited round to a friend’s house for tea, which is a first since she moved schools and reassured me that she is really settling and making new friendships.

Arthur and I went to his school’s fundraiser Easter Bingo because he insisted that he was feeling better (after virus #1) but about 10 minutes in, he was asleep face down on the table and I was juggling his numbers and mine. He also managed to dozily knock his drink all over the lady next to us (way to make friends, Artie!) but we still managed to come home clutching an Easter egg so all was well. And he told me the next day that he’d had a great time so maybe he wasn’t as asleep as he looked!

I took my lovely Mum out for the day one day to explore some of the local(ish) countryside and have lunch together. We walked a section of the Severn Valley – down one side of Ironbridge Gorge, over the famous bridge itself and then back along the other side of the Gorge to the not-so-famous Coalport Bridge where we started. We had our lunch in The Woodbridge Inn, which sits next to Coalport Bridge and it was amazing! If you are ever in the area, I recommend stopping by.

Then the Easter holidays arrived, we started out by heading to our church Easter Market (coming home with yet more Easter eggs from competition winnings)  and then our monthly jaunt to a local pub quiz with my parents (we do a bit better now that my Dad is back on the team!).

Midweek, we set off for Scotland. One day of travelling took us to Loch Lomond where our friends very kindly let us invade their holiday cabin for the night, and the next day saw us travelling onwards and upwards to Lossiemouth to stay with our other friends who live up there.

It was their little boy’s Christening on Easter Sunday, so there was a crowd of us staying with them for the surrounding days which was great fun. There were six kids under 8, two dogs and a multitudes of grown ups – happy, semi-organised chaos.

Easter Bunny even remembered to come visit us!

Once home again, I treated myself to a Me-Night watching the National Theatre Live broadcast of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead starring Daniel Radcliffe. Tom Stoppard is a Word Wizard and it was great to see his work in action, I laughed a lot and I’m so pleased I impulse decided to indulge my theatre-loving side.

It was my parents’ 44th Wedding Anniversary and we all went round (with cake) for the day and it was lovely to all spend time together doing not much of anything.

Then the kids went to their Dad’s for the weekend and I celebrated my child-free status by… babysitting my neice and nephew instead!

Oh, and Tori has started going sailing with Caius on Turbo, our boat. She already appears to know more than me.

Then it was back to school and swimming lessons and Beavers and Dance Club and all the other normal things and I need a holiday to recover already!

April has been a total slump month on the reading front though – I’ve finished three books, none of which were my book club books. Oops.

Hopefully May will get me back on the book track!