Three spousless strays

The other day I said to the boys, “good fire” - a self-congratulatory statement on being able to not keep the home fires smoking during Nick's absence. Aaron’s response was immediate - “yes mom, who came around to build it?”  Got to school around 9.45 today, with a lot of stuff to do.  The boys and I had pies for lunch, comfortably seated in my warm office. At 1 pm I dropped them off at the Tuckers but still had to go back to school – only left there at 2 pm. Came home just long enough to stoke the fire, then did grocery shopping at PaknSave where it was a Mad Day with lots of yummy specials.  Around 5.30 we arrived at the Phillipses for tea. Justus and Andreas also came - we apparently all fell into the 'waifs and strays' category. After tea we played Dutch Blitz; around 9.30 pm Andreas cottoned on to the fact that we are all on holiday but he is not, and realizing that we were in no hurry to wrap up the evening, he left while the going was good. Played Uno following that, then just chatted for a while before going home. It got pretty late!