It's a public holiday today, which gives us a long weekend. It was hot today, with a maximum of 35 degrees. There was a pleasant amount of swimming today, and an unpleasant amount of domestic warfare - me against the rest of the family - culminating in the drawing up of a first draft of house rules.

Luckily the late afternoon and evening made up for the earlier part of the day. Robyn declared it Candlelight Night and gave Peter a list of requirements when he went shopping. Candlelight Night is a new family holiday event, according to Robyn, and includes braaiing, roasting of marshmallows, burning of candles, night swimming, night trampolining, and torch-light games. Another holiday family event is Stay Up As Late As You Like Night, of which we have yet to savour the delights. A small mean part of me wanted to schedule it for tonight, as a) it would have coincided with Candlelight Night (bumping off the proverbial two birds), and b) the kids are already exhausted from the last two late nights they've had.

On Wednesday I took the kids to a local nursery so that we could buy a decent-sized spade for the leveling of the ground for the wendy house. The sensible thing to do would be to build the wendy house on a conveniently already level piece of ground, of which there is plenty on our property. I have, however, never been one for sensible. Instead I want to build it on the sloping top of the steep bank behind our house - next to the jungly bit created by the cave-like spreading branches of the litchi tree. The kids love to climb this tree. I even wowed them on Tuesday afternoon by climbing with them.

The nursery we went to also has a tea garden and a play area, so they had fun playing there while we waited for our lunch. Unfortunately, Daniel had a rather dramatic wet pants experience. This was caused by the fact that I forgot to take a bag of clean clothes along. Outing after outing I faithfully take along a complete change of clothes for each child. This prevents spills and accidents. This time I forgot. Hence the accident. I surprised myself at my coolness though. Daniel hates the feel of wet clothing, and immediately removed shorts and underpants. Our lunch had arrived, and the tables were outside in the garden. I just sat him there in his t-shirt (a longish one luckily) and by the time he had finished eating his clothes were dry so I put them back on, and he ran off to play. I think with child number 3 one definitely gets a bit more gung ho with this stuff.

On Wednesday night we went to the Durban Botanical Gardens for Carols by Candlelight at the Lake the the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra. It was a lovely evening. Last year we got drenched by the rain but this year it only started to rain right at the end. From the kids' point of view, we were lucky enough to spread our picnic blanket next to a tree which they had lots of fun climbing while we all listened to the music. Daniel was a little scary here.