They started with Pokemon watching and animal mazes and lego play.

We spent quite a bit of time watching construction on the street outside our house.  “What are they doing now?”

Gavin worked on more letters to friends, each with a drawing, while Lilah wrote a message and drew a picture on a card she started yesterday for her friend.

There were spinning like a top in the living room breaks and an Ironman Uno game.  They made a maze out of cardboard and clear plastic packing for the stuffed animals, stuffies as they call them.  Then more letter writing.

We followed a conversation round and round (as I like to) beginning with horse riding, then horses riding us, then horse writing, which was explained by Gavin as writing letters to horses.  We spent many minutes telling each other what we’d put into our letters to horses.  “Dear Horse, do you prefer apples or carrots?”  “Dear Horse, do you like bunnies?”

There was lunch and then good friends visiting, with lego play, stuffed animal festivals and an imaginary school session before goodbyes.  Gavin did some research online about how to make a robot.

I read Pippi Longstocking to the kids.  She went to the circus and then danced with some would-be burglars.  We love Pippi.  She went up against the strongest man in the world, but as she pointed out, she’s the strongest girl in the world, so of course she came out on top.

Afterward, there was dinner and poetry reading: Margaret Atwood, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot.  We all took turns choosing and reading.

You Begin

You begin this way
This is your hand
This is your eye
That is a fish, blue and flat
On the paper, almost
The shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
Or a moon, whichever
You like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
Is the rain, green
Because it’s summer, and beyond that
The trees and then the world,
Which is round and has only
The colours of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
And more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
With the red and then
The orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
You will learn that there are more
Words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
Like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
Your hand to this table,
Your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
Which is round but not flat and has more colours
Than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
This is what you will
Come back to, this is your hand.

Margaret Atwood

It was a peaceful day full of reconnecting with friends and small important moments.