We wanted to share some photos of what we have been getting up to during our time in lockdown. With Rich working from home and me needing to go into work on a rota to help look after some of the children of key workers, we’ve been pretty busy, but have managed to find a little time to get up to all sorts of things as a family.

One of our first projects was to relocate our wildlife pond, much digging was done.

Sam & Emily have both been busy with trying to earn extra Scouting and Brownie badges. We borrowed this impressive tent from a neighbour so that Sam could join in with his Scouting group’s camp from home.

Sam also had to cook his own dinner and slept out by himself overnight.

Sam has also managed to earn his first two Scouting badges – one for Martial arts and an International badge too, as he also took part in an online Scouting international event. He is currently working towards his Naturalist badge and has plans to earn a few more as well.

Emily has managed to earn one of her Brownie badges too – an Aviation badge.

It took three different attempts to get our bottle rocket off the ground but we did manage it in the end!

Emily has been working hard on getting her Archaeology badge and soon will be starting her Space badge!

Emily also got sent her Blue Peter badge for a letter she had sent into the show a couple of months ago with a picture she had done of our guinea pigs.

School is still happening, just about! We’ve been getting lots of work through from Sam & Emily’s school to complete at home and both Sam & Emily have been really good about working through it all each day (though they refuse to wear their school uniform to be at home!) Being at home has meant that we’ve been able to make a few bits more fun – Emily got to do a news report on our pet guinea pigs as well as building a model of a Roman Baths with Sam using Minecraft.

We have been spending quite a bit of time playing badminton in the garden as the weather here has been perfect for it recently.

On Easter Sunday Rich set up a egg hunt that had the kids running round the house and garden solving clues to get their treats while I got to work on the very tasty roast lamb.

On our Easter walk we got to admire all the beautiful blossom on the trees as well as spotting two scooter riding bunnies.

Our Ring Fit computer game has been a great way to keep exercising while at home – we’ve all been playing it each week and it really works all your muscles.

We’ve also been able to continue our Karate lessons over Zoom with our Sensei. We’ve managed so far not to break anything in the dinning room (though Sam has bashed his arm and I managed to do an elbow strike into one of our dinning room chairs…) and none of the neighbours have complained yet about all the kiai-ing.

We have decorated the windows with various rainbows including a beautiful rainbow dream catcher that my lovely sister Liz made.

We’ve also been having our own go at curing a virus outbreak by playing the Pandemic board game with the kids… No luck so far but we’ll keep trying 🙂

Much love to you all from all of us at Tea Towers, hope you are all safe and well, we can’t wait to see you all as soon as we can x