Me and Mr. Lacer have been on holiday for most of the week; which has been really nice because usually if I’m using up annual leave there is to be honest not that much difference, I just get to avoid getting up at 5.40am for the early morning shifts and I get to watch more telly because of no evening shifts. So having Mr. Lacer around has made things feel distinctly more holiday like. Not that it’s been that holiday like, although at least the weather was positively barmy for the beginning of the week.
This week has gone far too quickly though; the kids had their sports days on Monday and Tuesday, the school switching from cram the whole school on the playing field at once to having individual time slots for each year (which meant parents with more than one child in school didn’t have to flit between the year groups). Sports day this year was olympic themed, so no more teddy bear relays and dragging each other around on plastic sheeting, instead they had hundred metre relays, hurdles, shot put, javelin, the works. Now I hated sports day as an absolute rule as a child, so it was really nice seeing both kids grinning their heads off as they raced. Now, not that surprisingly, Boy Lacer is not athletically inclined, but he still had fun doing it. Girl Lacer on the other hand, well I don’t know what quirk of genes occurred there but she’s *shock* actually good, I never dreamt I’d have an athletic child but in her two individual events, she came 1st in the 100m hurdles and 3rd in the 100m sprint.
Anyway, other than watching sports days, me and Mr. Lacer have been sorting out some storage issues in the flat, you see when we moved into this flat, when Girl Lacer was 9 months old and Boy Lacer wasn’t even on the scene, we confidently predicted that by the time Girl Lacer was 5, we’d move to a bigger place (as the flat was and is tiny), well, she’s 8 1/2 now and we’re unlikely to move for at least another 3 years. So, the flat, which we thought would just about get us through the baby – toddler -preschool years, has had to stretch into the infant and now the junior years. We hope to move by the time Girl Lacer starts secondary school, but just as we hoped we’d move shortly after Girl Lacer started primary school, I’m realistic about that not necessarily happening.
Soooo, we’ve been struggling recently with trying to work with storage solutions that worked with smaller children that now no longer work as well with bigger children. For a start, the large chest of drawers that comfortably held all their clothes when their clothes weren’t much bigger than a hankie, was now over flowing and constantly breaking. So, Mr. Lacer hit Ikea and bought two child sized wardrobes, a cupboard and a toy chest, as well as a TV bench with three large drawers for the living room (to replace the toy storage that we did have under the TV, in the theory that now that they’re older they should have less toys (she laughs manically)).
Mr. Lacer spent yesterday and a good bit of today assembling the furniture (whereas I yesterday hid out in the garden enjoying the sun and embroidering *blush*). Today I started the task of getting all the toys that had been scattered everywhere into their new storage (whilst Mr. Lacer did the clothes). I hadn’t been completely idle yesterday, as the embroidery had been labels for toy bags, my own designs, I had got fed up of small toys getting separated and scattered everywhere, so the idea of labelled toy bags, maybe, just maybe, things will stay a bit more together (plus switching from trayed toy storage to drawers, I just knew if I was not careful, the drawers would become a sea of junk within about a week). So, excuse the mess (we’re still trying to find places for everything) and excuse the bad photos, light wasn’t good and the photographer was knackered.
^, I will admit it took me a little while to get into the first book, the dialogue in particular is unique but only in that the characters do sound that either they’re some sort of puritanical throwback to the founding fathers or that they live extremely hard lives on the street (I recommend the audiobooks of the series, they’re read beautifully and the dialogue isn’t so hard to get into).
is book 4 of the series; Chess has been sent to investigate a haunting in a school on the other side of town, the side of town that happens to be controlled by the drug lord Slobag, whose son Lex she used to sleep with. It’s also a side of town where the Church is treated with a scepticism that we didn’t get to see much of in earlier books. At the same time Chess is happily back with Terrible but is having trust issues, specially when Bump’s buildings start getting torched and it looks like Slobag may be getting inside information.
(affiliate link) is up on The Denver Post, which is a little surreal (I’ve never made my local newspaper, yet I get in one way across in the States). Anyway, link 
