Bits 'n' pieces

It's been a bitty sort of a day. We had to go out fairly early this morning (9.45!) to meet somebody and pass on something she needed, so after that was done we went to the nearest small town where I don't usually shop but I had heard there was a nice shoe shop there. Both girls needed their feet measuring as they were both done last September and I thought they might have grown since then. Jade surprisingly hasn't (yet) so she's still OK but Shannon is 2 sizes bigger. Luckily she is already wearing a pair of Jade's old trainers which are the right size so that was OK! Popped into a nearby charity shop and got 3 things for 50p each - a battery-powered bubble blower at Jade's request, a new 'princess-y' filofax type thing which will be good for a birthday prezzie if/when Jade goes to any parties this year, and a Dora flip-top cup similar to Jade's existing one, which means Shannon can have one too so there won't be arguments over Dora cups! So I was pleased with that little haul.

We got home, had snacks/food, then got the girls doing some colouring/cutting-out/sticking type activities while I attempted to beat the kitchen mess into submission. Then I got Jade busy on the computer and Shannon likes to sit and watch, so that kept them happy while I made lunch. This afternoon we were going to do some baking, but I started to measure out flour into a bowl and found the scales were not registering anything at all, so they seem to be kaput. Even though Jade had been nagging me all morning about the baking, she was pretty unfussed that we couldn't do it and instead I dragged them upstairs to do some tidying and sorting. I got the Christmas decorations back into the loft (!) along with several other boxes and bits and pieces, so that cleared a bit of space in the spare room (which used to be Jade's room) and in a cupboard in the corner of the girls' room. The plan is to move some of the downstairs toys into that upstairs cupboard, and hopefully keep the downstairs a little bit clearer and tidier. That's the theory, anyway! I did get as far as sorting out the 'general' toybox downstairs and throwing away all those Kinder Egg toys, cracker toys and general tatt that ends up hanging around. I was feeling ruthless so I threw away all the art creations Jade has been doing recently, that have been prolific, but it's definitely more about process than product so they've gone in the bin.

So the decks feel slightly clearer and the girls have mostly played happily today with this and that, although Shannon did fall asleep on the sofa in front of the TV at 6pm so I had better make sure of a reasonably early night as she'll be up early! Not to mention the several wakings during the night.