Surprise for dad

When it came to school time this morning, I opened the book to find that we only had two or three things to do, so I thought “nah, I’ll do it tomorrow”, and instead I put on a short educational DVD about Spot and his colours. It was completely horrible and I couldn’t sit and watch it, but as usual the boys had their TV faces on and wouldn’t have cared if it was worse. In the meantime, I sat in Nick’s office, drinking tea and chatting! At 10, we had our usual break, and then we did a craft, cutting out and sticking cardboard cutouts onto a big piece of paper, similar to what they saw in the DVD. We now have a landscape of trees, clouds, a red shed, a blue pond, a yellow Spot (that’s a dog), his green crocodile friend, and an orange basket, stuck up on the passage wall. Then Caleb took it further, and on a separate piece of paper, drew robots, spaceships, aeroplanes and arrows, indicating that they were about to destroy earth, with the words “end of the wild”. Oh boy. Fortunately the robots thought St Helena was a whale, which if you look at it on a map you can see how a robot would think that, so they didn’t annihilate us. Just another advantage to living on a remote island. Come to think of it, if aliens ever invaded, I don’t think they would target us.

After Nick left for Bible Study at 5, I cut the boys’ hair. Caleb’s hair likes to stand up all the time, it very seldom lies flat, so it invariably looks untidy. Aaron’s hair becomes a birds-nest if it gets too long at the back. I told them that it would be fun to surprise Nick, and then Caleb had the idea to make him a present, which turned out to be a black tie with multi-coloured felt polka dots all over it, and elastic so it can go around his neck. Actually it turned out well, and although I don’t foresee Nick wearing it in the pulpit, it definitely is wearable. That was then put into an empty cereal box to disguise the shape, and wrapped (all Caleb’s idea). Then “dyr dad, welcam” was written on the wrapping. That means, “welcome to the present”. Now it is on the floor at the front door, so Nick can trip over it as soon as he gets home late tonight.