This week has been a complete blur and I feel like I can’t remember most of it. To be fair that is perhaps to be expected when you try to catch up all of your drinking from January into the first week in February. Boy it’s been wild!! I’d forgotten how much easier it is to home school with a beer in the other hand.
Home schooling and remote working continues to run in tandem although to be honest it’s getting harder and harder. Only one more week until half term so we definitely know how teachers feel! This week has been all about pirates however so we’ve made hats, a ship, advertised for a crew and learnt lots of new adjectives. I can reliably inform you that Captain Swashbuckle E is the happiest pirate on the seven seas with the cleanest and tidiest ship. I just wish her bedroom would follow suit!
Right here we go with the top 5 for the week:
1. Today marks the 12th anniversary of the first date I went on with my long suffering wife. We like to mark it each year in some way but a night away from the kids wasn’t on the cards this time around. We’ve managed to make it special however, starting with a lovely homemade card presented to us by E. We did some little gifts and made some blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Steph then baked the most gorgeous afternoon tea for lunch. I was in charge of the evening meal and cheated a little by just ordering in our favourite Pavilion! I’ve been thinking back to that night, waiting in Durham marketplace for her to get off the bus so we could walk round to the pub together. How I ever convinced her to stick around this long is beyond me, and I’m pretty sure it’s not because of my great taste in mugs! But I’m not complaining and hope she’ll hang on in there for a few more years yet! 
2. This week was Children’s Mental Health Week with lots of schools running various activities. This has never been so important than at present with so many routines thrown into disarray and so many additional pressures and stresses that children shouldn’t have to face. E’s school decided to to run a “Dress to Express” day on Thursday where the kids got to wear anything they wanted to express their own feelings and personalities and preferences. Inevitably E plonked for a Disney Princess dress to let out her inner diva. It also happened to be the day where her little brother ditched all of his pyjamas and decided he wanted to start wearing E’s princess ones instead. I thought the one downside of having a boy was that there was little chance of hand me downs but nothing could be further from the truth! #BeYou
3. The top 5 is meant to be the real highlights of the week so when something happens which is a highlight of the year, or perhaps the decade, then it undoubtedly needs including here. Scotland winning the Calcutta Cup. At Twickenham. For the first time in 38 years! Saturday was a very VERY good day. We built up to the match as a family, with M and me donning our matching Scotland tops. Obviously there were some divided loyalties in the house but one member is still undecided. I asked E who she was going to support and she explained it was complicated. Apparently she is a little bit Scottish, a little bit Australian and a little bit of where Aunty Katy is from (American!) but she’s mainly English. It’s amazing how children can break your heart! In the end however it came down to the kits the two teams were wearing and she wasn’t bothered about the colours so decided she liked the rose better as it was prettier than the thistle. I’m hoping we can bring back the pink kit as that might convince her to return to the right side of the divide! 
4. The news is dominated at moment about vaccines and this clearly hasn’t escaped E’s attention. During one of our daily walks she asked me about the special injections people are getting to stop them catching coronavirus.
D: “You mean the vaccine?”
E: “Yes Daddy. When will me and you and Mammy and M get it?”
D: “Well not for a while yet. They aren’t giving it to children as they don’t really get sick. So they are giving it to the older people first.”
E: “Oh, I see” <slight pause> “But what about you Daddy? I mean you are pretty old…”
D: “How old do you think I am?”
E: “Sixty something? Grandma said you were middle aged.”
I don’t care what Steph says. I’m definitely buying in some hair dye! 
5. The walking challenge is really heating up in our house. I am delighted that I have hit my 10,000 steps each day this week although some days I’m not quite sure how I managed. The weather has not been particularly helpful but that wasn’t going to stop the competitive bones that Steph and I both possess. It’s all gone a bit too far if you ask me, which I only realised when we passed each other pacing around the upstairs rooms on some weird route that has been developed to maximise our step count. I even caught Steph taking the clean clothes upstairs one item at a time. Where there’s a will there’s a way and boy there is a lot of will under this roof! I don’t think the work totals bother either of us as we have our own individual head to head to focus on! 
LawyerLow Diaries 
Some great photos.
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