I love to start the week by writing the Monday Happy List. It’s a chance for me to sit down and reflect on the things that made me happy in the previous week, as well as to record some of our family adventures. It’s usually a post I love to write but obviously life has changed considerably for us and everyone else in the UK over the last few weeks. Life is hard at the moment for everyone but I still want to try and record some of our happier moments.

Monday Happy List {Week 288}

It felt like a short week due to the Bank Holiday. We enjoyed a long family walk, finally discovering the location of the Battle of Britain house in Ruislip Woods. Then it was back to work (from home) for my husband so we carried on with our usual routine of school work in the mornings. Last week we enjoyed PE with Joe, nature talks with Chris Packham, story time with Tom Fletcher, live art classes and more. Home learning is a lot better than I thought it would be. We also planted seeds and took the dog for a walk every day.

Last week we found out that one of our neighbours works for the London Ambulance Service. We are so proud of her (and all our key workers) right now so we spent Thursday afternoon painting a huge Thank You sign. I let the children stay up to take part in the weekly Clap for Carers and they carried their sign over and stood outside her house so she could see it when she came out. We also made a new window display with all our rainbow pictures which now fills one window.

We’ve been making use of this enforced time at home to have a clear out. Over the weekend we cleared out the loft space. For some reason we had kept loads of toy packaging so these all came down and have been flattened ready for bin day. The kids actually enjoyed helping and had a good clear out of their toys. I’ve filled the boot of my car as the charity shops are all closed at the moment.

Our little puppy turned 23 weeks. He is enjoying having us all around and we’ve had some good walks with him. He has been getting really hot so we knew he needed a proper groom. He was booked in for a groom but it got cancelled so we thought w might have to do it ourselves. We tried using clippers but ended up using scissors to cut his hair. It’s not brilliant and I am a little embarrassed to take him out for a walk but it will do for now!

We made sure there was plenty of time to relax and craft last week. We tried some projects in Project: Print; we painted rocks including Elmer and some NHS ones; we decorated the playhouse in fairy lights for my daughter; made dough balls from scratch; made the Poppy Chancellor papercut she designed for Victorinox and painted a huge rainbow to say thank you to all our carers.

We’re keeping busy and safe at home. Some days are very long but we will get through this!