Bulls in a china shop or boys in a toy shop?

Since we finished school early, and since we had promised the boys that after Nick got paid we would give them ₤1 each to go and waste on junk toys, and since Nick isn’t preaching on Sunday coming and has a bit of extra time this week, we decided to go out for lunch today, but going out before lunch so we could go to the toyshop first. We tried Queen Mary’s first, which didn’t have anything new or great, so then went to the Emporium. Still busy with renovations, they have scaffolding up around the front, but the shop is still open for business…what a transformation though. The partitioned off section has only today (or possibly yesterday) been reopened after several months of work. I personally can’t tell the difference, but I think possibly the upstairs section has been expanded. So, with all the downstairs floorspace available again, they are sorting all their wares out. The toys, which had been squashed into a tiny section, have been moved to a bigger space, and they are getting their Christmas stocks in now already, so there were loads of new things to look at. The boys haven’t seen so many toys together since last Christmas. It was really cool, and they were so excited. Nick and I thought, if this is how they react to the Emporium’s relatively meager supply, imagine how they will be at a ToysRUs or Reggies!!!!! We saw some nice things, but settled on two foam swords (adding ₤1.20 to their money, but it was worth it). The foam is a very high density, strong foam, so they can completely hit each other as hard as possible without hurting themselves or breaking the swords. Super duper toys – nothing better. So, with their purchases in hand, and safely tucked against their shoulders, we walked down to Sally’s for our lunch, and then took it to castle gardens – the boys shared a sausage baguette as usual, and Nick had a spicy chicken and cheese on brown baguette, and I had my regular roast chicken with salad filling baguette – yum! Since Nick and Caleb were finished first, they had a good old sword fight there and then. I said to Nick that perhaps we ought to have bought a third sword!

Reflecting on life on the island, we have had many adventures and opportunities here that we would never have had otherwise. Nick has noticed this with his music…the opportunity with Tammy came about from our providential meeting on the ship when we came over!! He’s been able to buy a lot of equipment because of our link with Wilson. I would (probably) never have started scrapping unless we’d come here, as I wanted a way of keeping all the bits and pieces from the ship together and labelled. If I hadn’t started the scrapping, I wouldn’t have had the school opportunity, because the Head Teacher knows I am crafty because she runs the bookshop in the market – word gets around. I’m developing a scrapbook for the Museum too…we’re kind of small fish in a small pond here, in a place where everything is noticed. And I definitely wouldn’t have caught a fish from the deep sea off a yacht! There’s a lot that we can reflect on and be grateful for.

Oh, Caleb did actually manage to pull his own tooth out last night, shortly after going to bed…he came to me with tooth in hand and a big bloody hole in his broad grin.