Back To School

So that's it.
The end of the holidays for Coco, back to the school routine tomorrow for all of us. I got her school uniform out ready this evening (starting as I mean to go on...) and I couldn't quite believe how fast the holidays have gone, I remember triumphantly stuffing it into the washing machine on the last day of term like it was yesterday.

But the holidays have treated us well. I have a vague sense that I haven't managed to shoe-horn in quite enough fun and magic into them as I wish I'd had, but life can't be magic all the time... that's an important lesson to learn; and we have definitely had our fair share of good times. I'll probably do a full round up in the coming week that will inevitably look a lot more magical and charmed than it really was, but that's why I blog to make my life look better! Ha!

We ended the holidays with supper outside on our new garden table (yep - just got that sorted in time for... um Autumn) we had Coco's requested menu, rainbow rice, which is basically rice with as many different coloured vegetables as you can gather together added to it - a throwback to her days at nursery, and fish fingers. She wanted to make the fish fingers a la the 'I Can Cook' recipe (which I'd thoroughly recommend) but we couldn't be bothered to go to the shops and get fish so we had the normal kind. Then we had ice cream and Hugh read the last two chapters of Charlotte's Web, which made Coco cry. He didn't read them in a sadistic kind of way, we had actually got to that point in the book.
Such a good book.

And to any parents of first time schoolers out there I wish you luck. It's a shock to the system... I found the first term that Coco was at school very hard. I was really emotional about it, Coco was absolutlely fine... just a bit exhausted which meant she wasn't at her best when she was at home which was a nice little extra kick in the teeth, you miss them and then they are foul to you.
The other thing that was hard from my point of view was feeling like I was back at school myself. The years of doing a school run stretching ahead of me like a life sentance. I loved my school days, but have no desire to go back; homework, exams, cliques in the playground, getting to class on time and remembering to take this book to that class etc etc. But being the parent of a primary schooler is actually a bit like that; which is througherly annoying and inconvient. Really didn't think having children through did I!?*

The feeling has passed now though and I've loved seeing how Coco's grown over the last two years, lucky for us, she still loves school and after the Charlotte's Web tears went to bed very excited to be back there tomorrow.

*Only five more years till boarding school. Ooops did I just commit that thought to the internet forever & ever. (This bit maybe edited out shortly).