Living and loving it – the holidays are here

The holidays are here! All the females in the Beyanga household are thrilled beyond words. Why? Sleep! For the next three weeks, we will not have to live by alarm clocks or wake up when it is still dark outside. We will not have to worry about waking up 10 minutes late and rushing through everything in order to be ready when the shuttle arrives to pick the younger one. We shall not have to worry when the school shuttle is later than usual. We can take as many naps as we want or as necessary – in the mid-morning, after lunch or even a quick evening nap if we have had to start the day really early. The boarder is perhaps the happiest of the lot – three weeks of no early morning, night and even weekend prep. As you can tell we love to rest!
It is also now a relief that homework will be done at a leisurely place and I shall not have to worry about looking through it early in the morning, finding mistakes and having to explain grammar and punctuation, or getting the pupil to read a whole chapter in the Bible in order to answer her CRE questions better, in five minutes. Breakfast can be had with fun conversations and we can have second and third helpings – without worrying that we will delay the school shuttle. 

The holidays also mean more fun activities. The children can sleep later so we can watch movies ensconced in the seats, with full flasks of tea as we keep checking to make sure hubby has not slept off and missed an interesting part in the animation (the poor dear!). Novels, old newspapers and any interesting reads will be devoured as people catch up with what they missed while they were busy studying. If they are lucky, they will also get to earn a little money as we give them some work to do. Should I get some editing gigs, the younger one shall provide a reader’s view for the children’s books and the older one shall enter corrections made on hard copy, on the soft copy’s first draft. Wish them luck! They also get to do many house chores, some of which they are not keen on but which with their dad’s military-like instructions they perform. They might sulk once in a while but it is a joy to see them improve their skills, speed of work, and become more responsible.
Perhaps the person for whom the holidays might not make much difference is the house-help. No amount of asking, convincing, or coaxing can get her to sleep a little more in the mornings. Come rain, come shine, come week day, come weekend, her routine just does not change. She is up at the same time every day. It does work for her though because by 9am, she is done with most of the chores (she does a neat job of them all too!) and can bury her head in the newspapers, make numerous calls to friends and family or watch her favourite telenovelas leisurely. If there is one thing she likes about the holidays, it is that the boarder is back and there is a little more noise and laughter in the house.

We also expect to have less traffic on the roads which means, we should spend less time going to and fro the office. And when we get home, the girls will take over opening the gate to welcome us back home. When they were much younger, they used to get excited and hop into the car for the drive from the gate to the garage which is all of 20m long. They are now too old for that. But they still come to the car, open the doors for us and grab anything we might have come home with as they regale us with the fun and fights they have had all day long. It is good to have them back.
Happy holidays everyone! 
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