Have you had your pancakes?!

Sophie asked me for pancakes for breakfast, again. She’s been asking for days. I keep making promises. I keep breaking them. Oops! But today, I pulled out my wooden spoon and whipped up some batter and fulfilled an overdue promise.

It wasn’t till mid-morning I discovered it was actually Shrove Tuesday today!

I found a whole wealth of information and activities on the wonderful website of Woodlands Junior School in Kent – in the UK.

We also learned how Shrove Tuesday (otherwise known as ‘Pancake Day’, ‘Mardi Gras’ and many other things in different parts of the world!) is celebrated in many other countries. We watched YouTube videos of Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro. We printed off the wonderful mask templates on the Activity Village UK website to make our own masks.

We had fun!

Charlotte came home later in the day, after a fun time with her school doing ‘Orienteering’ around the city. She’d also been to art club after school and then jazz dancing – it was 6.30pm by the time she got home with Dan! She was a bit tired later tonight and upset at 8 ish, so I spent some time talking with her and, after Sophie and Alice had gone to sleep, I watched a bit of Dr. Who with her – a bit late to bed as a result… (10pm!) – but she went to bed happy to have had some one on one time at least (and I made a note to myself to make sure she gets more of that time too).

It’s been a good day for Alice, Sophie and I – finished up with a play on the ride-ons at the Chocolate Fish in Shelly Bay and a play at Lyall Bay with some local children from the neighbourhood.

I finally got Sophie to practice some hand-writing too, whilst working on a blog post with her about our day (unfortunately this timed close to bed time and, with my attention focused on helping Sophie, poor Charlotte felt a bit put out).

I really do miss Dan and Charlotte during the week and am always so happy to reconnect at the weekend. As our girls grow and become increasingly unique in their characters and levels of independence it’s becoming a fine juggling act at times to keep everyone happy. Not easy to please everyone all of the time. We all need time with one another, as well as time by ourselves and time as a whole family. If the scales are too heavily balanced in one direction for too long there’s always going to be someone feeling a little out of sorts. I feel so much better for having a good chat with dear Charlotte tonight and am looking forward to spending a little more time one-on-one with her too.

Ah well, I’ve just finished washing up in the kitchen and folding the laundry away (and putting back in place most of the 101 things that get moved around in a day!) and am finally heading to sleep (Dan’s still hard at work here at home bless him).

Hope you have a good Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday!!). Giving anything up for Lent? I’m going to forgo chocolate – which shall be tough as I’m a Cadbury Creme Egg addict!