The moral of this story is..............

Two tired boys woke us this morning with "he punched me". "he punched me first" "he won't let me have the remote" "I'm not allowed to watch my programmes so I hit him". We should have guessed that today was going to be challenging and just stayed in bed. However, we didn't.

This butterfly was on our window - this photo makes it look like a giant

Huffle wanted to go out and buy a Volleyball/badminton set he had seen on offer, so him and Smallest went and got it and left me to have some quality time with Small.

They had fun too with sports equipment.

We had a great time, folding paper aeroplanes and flying them, laughing, giggling, reading to each other. Everything was fine...............

We built a stunt plane

A professional and a glider

One got stuck in the tree

Guess who had to climb on a chair and get up the tree and get it down?

..............Until Smallest and Huffle came home. Smallest saw the paper planes and picked one up to fly it, Small went mad, screaming at him. We sent him to his room and he sat in there shouting out of the window "I hate you" to Huffle and I.

We ignored him, he shouted some more. He eventually calmed down. We had built the net. Smallest went off on a grump this time. Huffle and I played badminton together (nicely without arguing). Then the boys came and played with us. We snook off for a quiet cup of tea on the front porch while they were paying nicely.

They found us, the shouting and fighting started again. We split them up and decided to go out for dinner. We read the boys the riot act and said that if they misbehaved they would be banned from TV, computer, IPad etc for the rest of the weekend. They agreed to behave. We told them that if they didn't behave during dinner, there would be no ice cream. They agreed.

We set off for Port Perry. The Weather was warm. Port Perry was busy.

We liked this sign. Gone Fishin

I loved this mirror - $450. Bit big and a bit expensive!

We ordered dinner in a nice Italian we have been to before. The boys behaved on the way there and during dinner.

We had a bit of trouble after dinner with Smallest but we got through it and and walked to the waterfront. We agreed they had been good enough for an ice cream.

Boys and sticks!

What a lovely happy family enjoying a day out!

tree

We took them to the park. Smallest had a bit of a problem with an older boy there who called him a Big Baby or he called the boy one, we're not sure. All I do know is, that his Mum was sitting right next to us while the fracas was going on. Her and her son eventually left saying nothing. We don't really know who said or did what!

After the park we decided to hit the road again as there was an antiques place we wanted to look at on the way back. We stopped at a couple of places but didn't get anything. On the way back we stopped at the forest. We had trouble again with Smallest in the antiques place. Being awkward, not doing as he was told, had to be dragged out by Huffle. At this point we gave him a last warning about banning TV etc.

The forest was lovely. We walked into the part where the trilliums were.

They were mostly open this time and looked fabulous. The boys were happy and played with sticks. We skyped Grandma and Grandad to show them the trilliums. All was well until one of the boys hit the other accidentally with a stick, then it all kicked off again. Smallest decided he wasn't going to move, despite the fact we talked about Cougars and Coyotes and not lagging behind and always staying with us. NO, he knew best, he wanted to stay in the middle, on his own, being grumpy. We lost our tempers with him and Huffle ended up carrying him out. We banned tv, computers etc for the rest of the weekend. He didn't care, he stuck his tongue out, he kicked, he hit, he screamed. We took them home.

Once home I went and visited Mrs Royal to look at her plants. We had a good chat. I could hear the kids playing so guessed everything was fine but didn't stay away too long, just in case.

The clouds from her garden. Just lovely.

When I came back, they had had their tea and were watching TV. (Huffle had said Smallest could have five minutes if he promised to say sorry to me when I came back). Smallest didn't say sorry, wouldn't say sorry so I removed him from the lounge. It all started again. Kicking, screaming, shouting I hate you. We tried to keep him from hurting himself or us but he just lost control so we took him to bed (it was nearly bedtime anyway).

What a nightmare. He hated us, he kicked and punched us, he scratched us. We held the door so he couldn't get out but that made him madder so in the end we left him and he slammed his door so hard that he broke the things on top of it that hold a big roll of paper for him to draw on. So I emptied his money box and told him he had to pay for the damage.

He was so out of control that I worried that there might be something seriously wrong with him. His anger is so bad there is nothing anyone can do with him. He wanted to go downstairs but we sat on the stairs so he couldn't get past. He tried to dive over the top of us, which if we had let him, he would have fallen head first down the whole flight. He punched, kicked scratched and screamed in our faces. It was frightful.

Small got ready for bed while I just held on to Smallest as long as I could to stop him hurting himself. We put one of his CD's on to see if it would calm him and after a while he did seem to calm. I let him go and he stood close to his CD player and forwarded the songs one by one. Then he laughed at us and ran downstairs. He apparently went and got the IPad and was about to play on it. Huffle got there and took it off him and put it high up so he couldn't reach. There were lots of tears (I think he had tired himself out by then). I read to Small. Huffle and smallest sat on his bed and cuddled and smallest cried lots. I came in to see what was happening and he just pointed at me and shook his head. He didn't want me there.

I cried so much this evening. It is so hurtful to see him like this. We wonder if moving here has had some awful effect on him. I'm sure he has been like this back home but you forget how bad things are when they are really bad. He seems the most settled out of all of us but who knows. He makes us very sad. No doubt he will come down tomorrow and be sweetness and light for a while. He can be the most loving child I have ever known. He often tells me he loves me. He likes to cuddle and sit on my knee. But tonight he has gone to bed without a kiss or cuddle from me and I never told him I love him and that hurts like mad.

Huffle wonders if it is because we don't have any support network here. They don't get a break from us and we don't get one from them. Even if we did want to go out, we can't because there is no-one we can leave them with. That's our fault, we know. We never left them with anyone where we were at home except Moo, Grandma or by rarely one of my close friends. When we have visitors here, we don't go out on our own. We entertain them or just carry on our normal routine with them.

We have had offers from a few people here to have the kids for us but it's so alien for us to do that, that we struggle to take up their kind offers. As I said, we never really did it back home so it seems strange to do it here. But I guess back home we had the support of our family of odd weekends and nights and even occasionally a weekend away.

Anyway, The moral of this story is don't let your kids stay up too late because they turn into horrible things.