Holly's Pink Hair

So we are all starting to go a bit mad and a bit bored at times given that we have been on lockdown for about 5 weeks now. Earlier this week I was in my bedroom with Holly and she spotted some old hair spray dye from Halloween which was on top of our wardrobe. One thing led to another and she asked what it was for and then wanted her hair done. So I obliged and did a nice pink/purple double ponytail hairstyle. Tina was not impressed!!!

As the weather has been so good Holly has also been enjoying going out on a daily cycle with me around the Wick. I have connected up her mountain bike using the  TrailGator and tow her around for about 3 miles. She absolutely loves it and it gets her outdoors in the fresh air and getting some exercise.

Holly as a red head.

Believe it or not one side is pink and one is purple.

To get our daily exercise me and Holly have been going out for daily cycles around the Wick.

Easter Egg Hunt

It's nice to see that even the boys are not too old for a good old fashioned Easter egg hunt in the back garden and even put on the silly rabbit masks as part of the fun. Just goes to show either how bored they are getting under lock down or to what lengths they are prepared to go to for more chocolate! Anyway we hid about 18 little eggs all over the back garden which took the kids all of about 5 minutes to find!!!

Nice to see Joshua and Brandon putting on the mask still for a traditional Easter Egg hunt.

Holly finds one in her toy BBQ set.

Brandon even looks like a grey bunny wearing that oversized fluffy fleece.

Holly returns with chocolates from under the trampoline.

Seeking out the last few well hidden eggs.

Not bad for 5 minutes work in the back garden!

Every year I make my Easter Egg cheesecake for Easter pudding, however as Easter Sunday was also my birthday we had birthday cake for dessert on Easter Sunday this year. All was not lost though, I made the Easter Egg cakes for Easter Monday and, wow, they were just amazing again. Everyone apart from Holly polished off a whole portion (i.e. half an egg) each. Such a nice treat each year and becoming a bit of a tradition like my Xmas turkey and leak pie.

My Easter Egg cheesecake with mango and strawberry yoke.

Crack it open and whats not to like, just divine.

More Lock Down Easter Crafts - Milk Carton Elephants

Keeping Holly entertained over the Easter weekend with some more craft activities, this time making elephants out of empty milk cartons. I cut the milk cartons to shape for me and Holly and then we both sat there and painted them pretty colours. Holly absolutely loves them and now has three in her bedroom and wants to make one for all of her friends that she is missing at school. Looks like we better get drinking more milk!

The elephant shape cut out of a milk carton,

Holly gets to work painting her first elephant.

For some reason Holly even out on her school dress to do the crafts (not sure Tina was happy as it is now covered in acrylic paint). 

And our finished items. Happy Ele-easter.

Making Lego Soap, Easter Eggs and Rainbows Planting

Lock down continues in to the Easter weekend and Holly has been busy making home made bars of soap with hidden Lego figures inside, doing loads of Easter crafts and planting some aloe vera and marigolds as parts of one of her Rainbows badges. The Lego soaps are actually really good and are now spread throughout the house in all of our bathrooms.

As usual we also started our Easter weekend on Good Friday and so the Easter bunny has already visited out house with the chocolate eggs. We haven't done our garden Easter egg hunt just yet as we figured we should save some of the Easter activities for Easter Sunday (I think I have used the word Easter far too many times in that paragraph!).

Holly getting the moulds and Lego figures ready to make some home made soap.

In goes he Lego figure and the soap mixture which she bought with her pocket money.

She has hidden Lego Princesses and dogs in the soaps.

Melting down the soap materials over the kitchen stove.

Holly loves making anything with soap or slime so this was right up her street.

Kitchen table all decorated ready for Good Friday.

One of our traditional Easter breakfasts ready for Brandon, a Cream Egg with KitKat soldiers.

Joshua opted for our other Easter breakfast, half an Easter egg filled with Coco Pops.

The Easter Bunny had been and Holly was very excited to see all the chocolate eggs and the message left on the light box.

Personalised Easter place mats.

Holly catching up on some of her Rainbows badge work with some planting and seeding.

She decorated this pot and then added some marigold seeds.

And this pot was a belated Aloe Vera plant which Holly was supposed to decorate and plant for Mothers Day.

Holly decorating her flower pots and plant labels.

Crossfit Box Jumps and Garden Picnic

So we are still on lock down due to Covid-19 and I am still working from home as best as I can. The weather has been so nice lately that we decided we wanted a picnic, but obviously you can't go out anywhere. So we did the next best thing and had a lovely picnic in the back garden!

Garden picnic in the glorious sunshine.

Lock down has also meant no Crossfit Rayleigh for me so one of my first jobs right back at the start of this mess was to get the garage cleared out so that I could train at home. The training has been amazing and I am really enjoying making up my own garage WOD's. However the one bit of kit I lacked was a 24" box for box jumps and step ups. So I decided yesterday to make my own one out of left over deck boards. Well to keep Holly entertained today I decided to let her paint it for me and she has done an amazing job. I let her pick the colours entirely herself and think it looks absolutely cracking (albeit not very manly!!!).

My homemade 24" box jump box (before Holly got her hands on it).

I let Holly pick the entire colour scheme and of course pink had to feature!!!

Along with lilac, yellow, blue and pastel green.

Holly thoroughly enjoyed painting my box and I think it looks amazing. Kept her busy all afternoon and looks great in my garage gym.

Bubbles, BBQ and Queens Speach

Last Friday we completed the second full week of home schooling and seem to be finally making progress and having an understanding from the kids of what we expect each day. Friday morning stared with Joe Wicks again, only Friday he asked everyone to do it in fancy dress. I called it right with Joe dressing up as Spiderman as one of his favourite exercises has been a jumping Spiderman lunge. Holly dressed up as Mary Poppins and kept the costume on all day.

Over the weekend we also tried to have a family game of Monopoly using Holly's Frozen Monopoly game. As usual the game went on for ever (over 2 days) and caused many arguments and lots of shouting. Holly won in the end but only because the rest of us had lost the will to live. Maybe we should find a different board game during lock down.

Today has been an absolutely amazing day for weather and we have spent most of the day playing in the back garden. It has been really nice to finally open up the bi-fold doors and experience our extension as it was intended opening out in to the garden deck area. Whilst playing in the garden me and H did a little bubble experiment with an empty bottle, an old sock and some bubbles which was really effective and made some amazing bubbles snakes.

To end the weekend we had our first BBQ of the year with some juicy steak, jacket potato and some salad. Then after getting all the kids baths and showers done, then having some pudding (homemade carrot cake) we all sat down to watch the Queen address the Nation regarding the Covid-19 pandemic. I think its great to see the Queen doing her part, but personally I felt her speech was weak and really didn't add anything to reinforce what the Government are trying to achieve with the lock down.

I called it, Joe Wicks dressed up as Spiderman.

Holly wore her Mary Poppins costume.

A family game of Monopoly - always good for some arguments.

Mine and Holly's bottle and sock bubble experiment.

The bottle and sock produce some amazing bubble snakes. 

Holly had loads of fun playing with this and chasing the bubbles around the garden. And it was completely free.

Finally we can use the extension as intended and open up our bi-fold doors on an amazingly hot day.

It's just perfect having the new man cave open out on to our decking.

First BBQ of the week. Lovely steaks and some lovely vegetable mix that I knocked up.

We made sure we all sat down with the kids tonight to watch the Queens Speech on TV.

Lockdown Arts and Crafts

Not much exciting to add to the blog as we are still house bound due to the COVID-19 lockdown. It is getting pretty scary out there now with some 500+ people a day in the UK dying and this number is increasing everyday. The lockdown was supposed to only be until April 13th, but I would be amazed if the government don't keep us on lockdown for all of April and if anything tighten up further on the current restrictions.

Anyway with the home schooling Holly is doing loads of arts and crafts which she is loving. As a symbol of hope for the Covid-19 a lot of people are putting rainbows up on their house windows/doors. So Holly made a big rainbow this week which now proudly sits on our living room window. 

Inspired by Lisa we also did some stone painting earlier this week which Holly really enjoyed. Our piece de resistance was an NHS Superman stone (again copied from Lisa) which we proudly pout on display outside our front gate. I was pretty shocked the next day to find that someone had stolen it, but then I was promptly told by about 8 million people on Facebook that this is a "thing" where people decorate stones and then move them on to see how far they can travel. I had no idea, but apparently it is quite big and there are websites and Facebook sites etc all about painting stones and finding / swapping them.

Holly is now getting really good at her Joe Wicks P.E. and even enjoys spotting the differences he makes in the wall unit each day.

The exercise mat was sliding around too much so I have since cut up an off-cut of carpet for Holly to exercise on.

Holly getting really stuck in to mixing paints and painting stones.

A lovely glittery blue for the NHS Superman stone.

I think we might end up doing more of this during the lockdown as Holly had so much fun.

And the party piece that was stolen a day later from our very own front gate. Our tribute stone to the hard working NHS during the current COVID-19 situation.

Holly with her giant rainbow which now proudly sits in our living room window.