School holidays

I used to love school holidays when I was studying in STF because I got to go home and sleep 18 hours a day. Now that I have school going kids and the holiday falls during the busiest time of the year I'm starting to loath the 6 long weeks. Year end is just mad and a madding period. I made at least 3 enemies in November and December 2009. And it's impossible to be friends with them ever again. People just lose their minds when it comes to financial year closing. There's quota to achieve, numbers to chase, customer billing, project completion, hardware deliver etc etc. Everybody is pushing everybody. I just hate this time of the year. Christmas and New year holidays have no meaning when most of the times we had to be in the office and do all the last minute things.

With so many things on the plate, the kids at home would call me at least 3 times of the day to inform me on 'very' important things like:
'Mak, Shawqi taknak mandi..! Marah dia nanti tau..'
'Mak, Wazif baling-baling buku tadi.'
'Mak, Shawqi taknak buat latihan Bahasa Malaysia.'
'Mak, Shawqi mandi pukul 3 petang, lepastu dia taknak gosok gigi.'
'Mak, nak pinjam laptop!'

If I'm in a meeting and tell them to call back later, they WILL call back about 2 minutes later. If I don't pick up, they will leave voice mails - very lengthy voice mails. Okay how many of your friends leave voice mails nowadays, eh? The funny thing is I never taught my kids to leave voice messages, they figured it out themselves. They love technologies, anyway. Once they played with my iPhone, messed up with the display until I couldn't even slide and it took me 2 hours to figure out what has been changed and how to reset it. Then they played PES on their desktop until the windows was corrupted. Had to format that desktop *Fuh* nasib baik mak dia celik IT. With the desktop down, they've been using my netbook.Aiyyoyo....

School holidays can be really trying and tiring to mothers like me. Besides all the headaches, parents have to also plan for their holiday activities like Summer Camp (kat Malaysia semua cuti sekolah time summer), tuition s, religious classes, picnics, visiting Petrosains again and again, visiting Toys r Us again and again.

We're not travelling this school holiday as my leave balance is 0. We'll probably go swimming and walking at the nearest park more often. Since it's hot during the days, we only have between 5-7pm for outdoor activities. Too bad.

Tonight I'm going to crack my head again to come up with more interesting activities for the kids. So far I've given them these assignments:

1. Complete exercise books for BM and BI, Year 3 and 4 (zalim, kan?)
2. Read English story books, starting with Count of Monte Cristo and King Solomon's Mines
3. Read Malay story books ( I haven't found any good one so far. Might need to go to Minerva soon).

So far the only assignment completed is the one they assigned themselves: getting new toys from Toys r Us. *sigh*

Their English class will start next week. I guess I'll just let them play with the toys and watch as much TV as they wish until then. Hahaha...