Behave! Ice-cream ban for a month
The Backseat Brigade
A day in the life of Team Oyeniyi can be exhausting, especially Saturdays, our shopping expedition day of the week. Mr O escapes this reconnaissance mission because I can only take four passengers and he has still to get his licence. As soon as he does – Mr O is doing the shopping run!!! Mr O had his first professional driving lesson this morning at 9am: this was a change from me doing the teaching. I can’t have done too badly as a teacher because he received lots of encouraging praise from the instructor.
First stop: Costco. The big wheel behind it is being repaired. It has been being repaired for twelve months, since April 2009. Is my maths a little out? Isn’t this now July 2011? Yes, that’s what I thought. The Southern Star Observation Wheel – great idea, but cracked in the summer heat shortly after opening!
Costco Melbourne
The Princess in her carriage!
Under carriage power
Then off to the Queen Victoria Market for meat, fruit, vegetables and a bright pink jacket. The brightest pink jacket I have ever seen, but someone loves it!
It is pink!
This is a back view of the Melbourne sky line, heading to the market.
Melbourne
So far so good. I got a car park right in the middle of the market – for the second week in a row. Any Melbourne-ite will tell you this is IMPOSSIBLE!
Next stop on the way home was K-Mart. Needed some dressing gowns and extra pyjamas. This was where all hell broke loose! Two young men were told off by staff for running in the store, in their new dressing gowns (as yet not paid for, of course). When we got home there were very stern words from Mum about behaving in a less than “proper” manner in public. Penalty: no ice-cream for a month. I’m not even going into the saga of the missing hairbrush, finally found in a state of disrepair. Let’s just say there were further discussions about respecting other people’s things! Kids are kids, not every day are they perfect! 
That is why they have parents!!
In fact, like any parent, if our kids WERE perfect every day, I’d be worried!! It isn’t normal!
Mr O jnr 2 discovered some feature on his iPhone to make an emergency call. In the interests of exploration, he did just that. iPhone confiscated for several hours!
At 4.30pm I was FINALLY heading home with four very weary fellow shoppers. That is about when Mr O Jnr 1 tells me he set a security code on HIS iPhone and he has now forgotten it. I call oldest daughter, who laughs her head off then instructs me on how to restore iPhone to factory settings.
Mr O then drives Mrs O to local supermarket to get sweet chilli sauce to cook the salmon steaks for dinner. Broccolini and jacket potatoes. Guess what? With the promise of swimming tomorrow, vegetables actually got eaten! Mr O Jnr 2 is the eating star – he eats anything! The two Misses said their teeth were too sore to eat the broccolini stems – but this all fell apart when their teeth coped with some after dinner crunchy treats! Mum is not silly.
Miss O 1 wanted a photo of her eating with a western knife and fork for her Facebook, so I’m stealing it!
Western style eating
Then followed an impromptu photo session modelling in, of all things, dressing gowns!
Dressing gown modelling
To end the day, Mr O Jnr 1 becomes our Kung Fu Fighter!
The inspiration for a day of photos came from The Redneck Princess. Check out her photo day too!
Kung Fu Fighter
Though exhausting, it does sound like everyone is have a jolly good time… Keep it up and kudos Robyn!
They are. It is all exploration and learning – they more they learn, the more they want to explore!
Linear equations for homework tonight. Do you have ANY idea how long ago it was that I last solved linear equations? Then I had to deal with the differences in how these are taught from “back in my day” or even “back in Melanie’s day” to now, plus the differences in teaching between here and Nigeria!
I’m afraid I wasn’t much help on the Dance homework though.
As people who are not WP members are still having trouble commenting here and end up commenting on Facebook instead, I would like to share an edited comment we received on Facebook for this article. It is very true and exactly how I see it!
This warms the cockles of my heart….whatever they may be….but I am glad to see they are running around like maniacs and keeping you on your toes….This is just gravy compared to what you were going through 6 months ago.
You get to be with the family and see your husband and enjoy a life together…what is a little teenage insanity???
This makes me happy and although I do feel sorry for you, on some level for the stress, I am just glad you have to ban them from things and tell them off
Hugs mum!!
dragonray
Having said that, Mr O Jnrs 1 & 2 – when you read this comment of mine, this is not carte blanche to repeat the exercise.
HA HA HA I love that you have to put disclaimers in your comments now!
Yeah, well – I’ve raised teenagers before – I know what to expect!!!
The Kung Fu fighter could have passed for the Karate Kid poster
Thanks! I’ll take that as a compliment on my less than stellar photography skills!
Hehehe… dig the kung fu pic and that pink jacket too! Mr. O is a smart man – I need to invest in a smaller car.
We need to invest in either a bigger car OR a second car – we are thinking two cars may be better than one big car. We will just take two cars if all of us need to go somewhere. Mr O is most likely going to need a car for work.
Heheheh, I am exhausted just reading that
So am I!
Oh my goodness TO – your day sounds exhausting!
Which is precisely why I haven’t done the “tag” article yet!
That is tomorrow’s task, plus some more writing of the book.