There are advantages to being small and skinny when you can still wear your brother’s age 5-7 dressing up clothes to school for fairy tale character dress up days at age 13!
08 MarPrince Charming goes to school
There are advantages to being small and skinny when you can still wear your brother’s age 5-7 dressing up clothes to school for fairy tale character dress up days at age 13!
07 MarAnd today, a tiny bit of seafront walking …
… and of course a tiny bit of caching thrown in.
Josiah left first this morning, to spend the day at the cathedral. I took Anna to school, to spend the day on a play rehearsal. Abbie and I then went off to church for the morning.
It was such a gorgeous day that we couldn’t bear to just come home for the afternoon, so we went and picked Steve up, then drove out to Budleigh Salterton for chips on the seafront. Only we couldn’t actually find chips, so we settled for bacon butties instead. And decaff coffee 
We had a lovely walk in the sunshine, but it was cold and blowy as well, so on reaching the other end of the beach we had ice-creams inside the cafe! Abbie spent ages finding spotty and stripy stones, so she was happy. A cache at each end made me happy too.
Home for a cup of tea and then Steve went out to round up the missing children while I cooked dinner. Hope all homework etc. is done as I asked them then took their word for it! We watched a film then it was an early night all round.
06 MarOnly a tiny bit of orchestra today …
For the first Saturday in ages we didn’t spend all morning at orchestra! Josiah had choir and then had to stay on at the Cathedral for the rest of the day for various things, while the girls were attending Choral Masterclasses at St. Margaret’s.
Abbie’s school choir had been invited so it was quite nice that she got to go as well. She and her friend dashed back to orchestra for the chamber orchestra rehearsal though, so I popped my head in then – couldn’t stay away
Steve and I went off for a coffee after that – well, obviously I didn’t have coffee as that would have caffeine in it, so had a nice hot chocolate instead. Nice to be out on our own, although as usual we seem to struggle to find topics of conversation which aren’t work or the children!
Home then for a few jobs, bedroom tidying, homework etc., before the next round of lifts were needed – picking up the boys then dropping Anna to a friend’s birthday party. Now sitting down to watch Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs together with the younger two.
Not much news from the week – it was work and school as usual, with the exception of Vivaldi’s birthday on Thursday when there was no evensong, though the two facts were, in fact, unrelated I put another job application in (heard back from the first one, the school withdrew the post as apparently they decided they couldn’t afford it), but I’m not terribly hopeful – and anyway I’d prefer to get a teaching post at my school, really. Steve spent half the week with man-flu but thankfully has managed to recover and not die, so that was good.
28 FebBirthday weekend
I’ve decided I quite like having birthdays on a Saturday; it means you can stretch celebrations out all weekend really! Luckily for all of us, it was also a free weekend for the boy choristers, so no choir commitments for Josiah (and no taxi driving necessary for us either!).
I went out with work friends on Friday night to start the weekend off – was very restrained though, as we all had to be up early the next morning. Steve and the kids did a bit of tidying up while I was out, which was very nice 
On Saturday I had a few things to open in the morning, then we all got up for orchestra as usual. Only it wasn’t quite orchestra as usual, because we had the pleasure of the company of six players from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, tutoring some of our sections, then playing with our children during the main rehearsal. I was on hostess duty, then photographer duty – all very enjoyable. And the orchestra played happy birthday to me (ok, they usually play happy birthday to people, but I got a special rendition). Brilliant to have the BSO tutors there, very inspiring for our players to meet people who do it professionally.
When we got home (much later than usual due to meeting a newspaper reporter as we were leaving orchestra!) we discovered a couple of parcels in the greenhouse – one was some bassoon reeds ordered for Anna after someone dropped a folder on hers (lesson to be learnt here: don’t leave your reed lying around), and some Gellibaff that I’d ordered for kids at school. On opening the latter we discovered that one packet had split in transit and was all over the place, so the children decided they would have to use it up, as a service to mankind, obviously
It is totally disgusting stuff, but they did have a whale of a time for a good half an hour, all 3 squashed into our bath. They are much too big for that kind of activity these days really!
Anyway, after that we got a quick bit of homework done, then it was time to head over to Steve’s parents’ house – they’d laid on a lovely birthday tea and then they looked after the kids while we walked down to the theatre. They also gave me some much needed birthday socks!
We saw ‘The Ministry of Fear‘, which I think was good, although I did struggle to stay awake – darkened, warm room, it’s a killer! Couldn’t even have a coffee in the interval, since I’m still on my self inflicted Lenten caffeine ban!
Home late, but no matter, as this morning we had a long lie-in. The kids got up and made pancake batter, then when I’d put the BSO photos up in various places and kicked a bit of website into shape, I finally joined them.
Delicious pancake brunch (marshmallows included ) then we went out in hunt of a few caches and a self-timer photo. Unfortunately it was a bit windy and we couldn’t find many safe places to prop the camera, so this is all we managed, but it’s better than nothing!
After that we came home to finish off homework and music practice. Made some burnt popcorn and did some arguing which I am obliged to include. Happily we now have some un-burnt popcorn and have settled down with Coraline on Blu-ray.
23 FebAs suspected …
Anna didn’t really need good luck yesterday. Steve dumped her at the door and drove off, as he couldn’t park anywhere (also unsurprising!), so she sorted herself out, and got on fine.
She came home with three lots of homework – one of which is going to test her as it’s revising a whole load of science that she hasn’t done, but no matter!
She also arrived back with a planner full of days to remember instruments; Wind Orchestra one day, String Chamber Orchestra another – and a couple more groups besides. Thinking about it, she hasn’t mentioned choir yet! I suspect all of these groups have lots more pupils in them, and aren’t just a mish-mash of other random instrumentalists who happen to be in the school
The friend she made yesterday apparently is also taking Grade 6 piano soon so at dinnertime they went and practised together.
All of these things are exactly the reasons we wanted to make a change, so Steve and I are happy. She got home and whipped through homework and music practice so that she could go out to the local youth club, where she still sees most of her best friends from Pinhoe, so I think she was happy too
21 FebDriving, Caching, Swimming, Practising
Since the last post I seem to have spent rather a lot of time in the car. I drove some people to Heathrow very early on Friday morning, which was a very easy drive. Then I did about 16 caches on a walk that took me about three hours – some of them were really tricky. After that I drove home, taking a couple more caches in en route, but got stuck on the M4 and M5 for hours, not such fun.
While I spent all day doing that, the kids had a good day with Steve; he took them swimming – something I *never* thought he’d do! In the evening we cracked open a bottle of fizzy wine and spent our mealtime making toasts to various little things – sometimes it’s good to celebrate the small things too After that, we watched Slumdog Millionaire, the start of a good weekend for films.
Saturday was orchestra as usual (though Anna took her bassoon as well as the spare cello which she doesn’t like!), and jobs as usual – cleaning out the guinea pigs, hoovering, etc. The girls had friends round again, too. Steve went back to work, as that was infinitely preferable to helping with housework, apparently 
After dinner we watched My Sister’s Keeper, and I blubbed all the way through. Thought it was very good though, and a reasonably close adaptation of the book – different ending but I still thought the film kept to the feel of the book despite the alternate ending.
Today Josiah and I drove down to South Devon to meet some new friends that we’ve got to know through our Suzuki Group – Joe and their little boy hit it off instantly over Pokemon cards, as you do. The mum is a piano teacher, so we arranged for her to accompany Josiah at the upcoming festival, so we needed to get together to practise for that. I *think* it went well, it certainly helps to focus on the things that need polishing between now and then. Very wowed by their house, which was beautiful, including purpose built music studio! Had to drag Josiah away as well.
Meanwhile at home Anna and Abbie spent most of the morning sorting out stuff for Anna’s new school, and doing some last minute bits of work, tidying etc. Anna then disappeared off with Aunty Emma at the last minute, to help look after Robyn and Lola during Em’s rehearsal. Steve has been out with a customer on a camper van – I never know if him being a long time is a good sign or not. When he’s home I think we’ll be watching the last film of the weekend, Seven Pounds.
Then I suppose I ought to think about what I’m teaching tomorrow ….
18 FebCello in pieces
We happened to be passing Devon Strings today so popped in to see if there was any update on the new cello – and it was out on the workbench! Rebecca was in the middle of some very delicate work around the edges.
It is also going to be treated to a clean – 100 years worth of dust inside, it was filthy! Still on a German name hunt, any suggestions?
In other news this week: my sister came to stay, which was lovely, even if we didn’t see *that* much of her. We had new doors fitted front and back – very exciting but no photo yet as the dratted door people left us with silver knocker and letterbox but a gold door handle – we’re getting that changed!
Yesterday the girls both went out for a Wind Group rehearsal, then Anna had a theory lesson. Josiah went to play with his friend up the road, and Abbie stayed at home and vacuumed the hallway after the door fitters had gone. Oh, and friends from church came for tea.
Haircuts all round this afternoon, and now more friends are here for tea and a film afterwards. It’s been a good week, especially helped by Josiah having a brilliant attitude towards music practices every day (these are usually Big Fallout times)! Plenty to do but lots of space either side, so everyone’s been happy.
16 FebPancakes chez Portico
I think we’ll have to visit these particular friends on Shrove Tuesday more often – the pancakes were wonderful!
We’d squeezed just about enough time during half term for a 24h visit, and it was fab to see one another – just enough time for lazing around, films and games for the children, and lots of chatting and cups of tea for the grown ups. Curry last night was great, as well as this morning’s brunch. I especially liked the choc chip pancakes
Flipping video is here
We’re now home for the rest of a busy week; my sister is staying and we have various other things happening which I’ll write about as the week goes on!
14 FebGoodbye Jim, hello Mary Lou!
A post about love for Valentine’s Day. Worryingly there’s a gender change involved here, so let’s not take it too far!!
Jim is Anna’s 3/4 size cello. Over the past couple of years (she insisted it was longer but I only picked up the cello in July 07, I know because I blogged it!) she has obviously spent quite some time with this cello and become very emotionally attached to it! So much so that she wanted to keep it when she moved up to a full size, but I said no, and callously sold it before she’d even finished with it!! No, seriously, it is going to a good home with the Puddles tomorrow so she’s happy really.
As an aside – is it odd to name one’s instruments? I thought so, but on questioning a few of the kids at orchestra it seems quite common! The most amusing one I’ve discovered so far is a bass clarinet named U-bend
Anyway. Anna’s new cello is over 100 years old, German, and was totally beaten up when we first bought it. I should have taken a photo but I forgot. It had a couple of really big cracks on each side at the front, a lot of the edging around the body was missing, the pegs (and holes) needed replacing – and so the list went on!
Devon Strings are currently working their magic, and restoring it beautifully, putting the best strings on it and setting it up properly, etc. At great personal expense! I’m very much looking forward to seeing it (and hearing it!), by the end of the month if all goes well. And hopefully Anna will love it just as much if not more than poor old Jim.
I dunno, you always have a special place in your heart for your first love, though, don’t you?
11 FebLast night at St. Luke’s
Not only was it the last night of St. Lukes’ production of Bugsy Malone, it was Anna’s last day at St. Luke’s today. (ooh just realised I didn’t really know where to put the apostrophe in that first one – St. Luke’s’ production?!!)
The show was very entertaining, they’d clearly had loads of fun putting it together and that really came across in the performance – the male leads were especially good. After the finale the cast all said goodbye to Anna before thanking the teachers etc., and even I felt emotional, as in some ways I’m sad that she’s leaving. She’s had a great time there, and came home with loads of cards wishing her well – from her friends but also from some members of staff. We were practically the last to leave after all her fond farewells!
Annoyed that I forgot my big camera (I’d meant to take it) but this one sums up the end of show feeling quite well
10 FebBugsy week and countdown to half term …
Counting the days until half term … and in the meantime it’s busy as normal, though I think I’m kind of grumpy while I’m waiting – there are lots of nice things happening during half term and it’s not coming quickly enough!
Anna’s got Bugsy Malone performances for three nights this week (we’re going to see it on the last night). Not one of my favourite shows, I must admit, but I guess it will pass the time It’s a nice ‘final fling’ for her, as these are her last few days at St. Luke’s. Another week of performances means another week of meals at odd times and feeling as though it’s all a bit manic, but there we go.
Josiah made cakes yesterday for his school cake sale at the end of the week – must put them in a tin. He let in a goal during football today which apparently made it a bad day, as the rest of the team weren’t very impressed with him!
No real news from Abbie, she’s just the same lovely as usual, apart from a haircut by her own fair hand – not too drastic, thank goodness. And she lost her coat but apparently someone has it, so it’s not totally lost, just hasn’t found its way home yet
Meanwhile (and probably the biggest shock I’ve had in ages), Steve has begun learning to swim – something he never learnt to do as a kid and consequently spent much of his teen/adult life avoiding any water-based activities. All credit to him, I think it’s much harder to go back and learn as a grown up.
I’m waiting to see if I get so much as a sniff at a job application I put in recently – guessing it depends on whether schools want cheap teachers with a strange background vaguely in education but no actual teaching experience! I’m something of an oddity and don’t really expect to get jobs very easily but having decided to try for one now I find myself on tenterhooks … if I get an interview I’ll have to actually *know* some of the things I was bluffing about on my application form. Otherwise just working hard everywhere: work, home, orchestra, and that’s just about all I have time for. Could really do with a cleaner, in fact …
01 FebFriends on iPlayer …
Thought I’d write a blogpost while catching up with various friends’ appearances on iPlayer today: first of all Josiah’s friend Jonathan on Newsround on the topic of a longer foreign exchange, then my friend Jo on Jeremy Vine (just over an hour in), talking about selective mutism. Both fascinating subjects and obviously ones I’m interested in given that friends are experiencing them. There’s also a child at school who has tendencies towards not speaking when they don’t want to … so I’m interested from that point of view too.
Nothing much going on here; I have taken delivery of yet more nametapes to sew on yet more school uniform (you’d have thought I’d have learnt after Joe changing schools in September, but no!), so that’s an ongoing chore. Before Anna’s change of school she’s madly rehearsing in order to fit in a talent show in aid of the Haiti Relief fund (I think this is what she’s playing but it seems to change daily!), and Bugsy Malone – just a little bit busy then.
Abbie was totally wonderful at the weekend, so I must mention that She did all her music practices without really being asked, offered to polish Josiah’s shoes along with her own when he threw a paddy about doing it, did a bottle bank run, finished off homework, and was generally helpful. After that she bought herself a magazine, sat and read it from cover to cover, then spent the evening cutting bits out and making collages. Her treat today was a jar of Sainsbury’s basics pickled onions, and a box of Twinings Strawberry and Mango tea – her choices, I must add, otherwise it sounds a bit odd!!
Steve and I went to the Cathedral Choir’s Candlelight Concert on Saturday night, which was fabulous. I wonder how long it will be before I cease to be amazed that Josiah is part of it. Don’t think he realises how fortunate he is!
Had a lovely day at work today, despite feeling crap with a cold. I ended up covering in one of my favourite classes with some of my favourite children – it’s a class I spend a fair bit of time in, which is nice. I must admit that this HLTA job has made me rather fancy having a class of my own, which might mean getting a proper teaching job … who knows?!
Anyway, time to take Abbie to her drum lesson …
26 JanNot without a food processor!
Riverford have been sending out recipe cards since Christmas, which is good, as I often get stuck in a rut with meals. We tried these Cheesy Cabbage Patties this evening, and I thought they were really nice.
The children moaned and gave them a verdict of ‘ok’. When I said it made a change from bangers, mash, and cabbage (which is what I normally do with cabbage!) they all replied ‘but we like it like that!’ I had thought I’d win them over with the addition of crinkle cut chips, but no. Ah well, you can’t win them all. I was proud of myself for making the effort to cook something more interesting, anyway. Would have been an awful recipe to try without a food processor though!
In other news … er, there isn’t much. Anna tried out a new youth group just down the road last night, and met a few old friends there, so I suspect that will become a regular, at least if all homework is done!
We’re preparing for impending school changes by sorting out uniform (mainly from 2nd hand shop so not too bad) and getting more nametapes. Annoyingly only saw these little button things on a different website *after* I’d ordered standard woven nametapes … now trying to persuade myself that they’re just a gimmick and probably not as easy to apply as the video would have you believe …
Also sorted bassoon lessons – same teacher has been organised to visit the new school, meaning I don’t have to break the contract with him, phew. Was worried about that for a little while!
Having a few niggles about mornings – we have all been struggling to get up in the mornings and it reached traumatic levels this morning when Steve and Joe were only just on time to leave, having both been in a rush to get ready because they didn’t leave themselves enough time. So they took the car I should have taken instead of the one which failed to start. Only problem with THAT was that Anna’s blazer and school bag were in it – of course she didn’t notice because she was still in bed; had she been up she might have missed her blazer before Steve was all the way across town. So I dropped her to school in the last car we had in the drive (fuel light on, of course ), and left her with her bassoon, freezing in just a school shirt, waiting for Steve to drive back with her stuff.
This MAY teach a few people a lesson about getting up a bit earlier …
25 JanSecond geeky caching post
I may do these at irregular intervals when I am very bored and probably ought to be doing something else, like updating the orchestra website or something. Here’s an update on the last geeky caching post that I wrote about six months ago. Easier to view pictures big on flickr if you’re actually interested, otherwise you can get a vague idea from the filled in counties on the uk maps, say ‘yes dear, that’s nice’, and flick on to the next blog
First here are last year’s graphs:
And now today’s:
Adding in the little graph that shows difficulty and terrain, as I am particularly proud of the 5/5 that we did last year!
24 JanJust for the sake of it …
Nothing much to say though. A fairly average weekend: choir/orchestra yesterday morning, cleaning, chores, and lolling around yesterday afternoon. Film/tv watching in the evening.
Today has been quite nice though. Josiah had three services to sing at the Cathedral and we’d not got our acts together with regard to booking him in to school for lunch, so instead we met him and went out to Pizza Express, which was a big treat. This was after a little caching expedition on my part, while the three lazier members of the family were very slow to get up.
We mooched around town for a bit (Anna went off to meet friends at the cinema) then attended evensong and came home for some TV. We’ve been catching up on old James May’s Toy Stories and only got round to watching the LEGO one tonight – fabulous
Finished the evening off with a bite of tea and then watching the Bodyguard for old times’ sake. I think the memory of it is probably better than it actually is … !
15 JanPanto Week
Or: so much for less junk food this year! This week we’ve had a few muddly mealtimes as the girls have been rushing about to panto, and timings haven’t exactly been family-meal-friendly!
They had a technical rehearsal on Monday night, full dress rehearsal on Tuesday evening, then performances every night after that. I’ve been helping with the front of house for the past couple of evenings, but tonight we’re going to watch properly, along with Grandma, Grandpa and Robyn. There are some pictures on flickr but only for friends and family as they’re not my photos!
Panto has been great – loads of hard work but the girls have loved it. They’ve made friends and had fun, and I think it will be much like pregnancy – I’ll have forgotten about the niggles by the time the next one comes around and they want to do it again!
In the middle of it all, on Wednesday both Anna and Abbie sat entrance exams for St. Margaret’s – and we heard towards the end of the week that they’ve been offered a music scholarship and an academic award respectively – which is great news. We had toyed with the idea of applying for a specialist music school place for Anna but they’re all miles away which would have meant full time boarding, and we quite like her really, so actually we’re all very happy to abandon that plan and keep her at home, but in a school where she will have a peer group doing music at the same level that she is. So, not exactly sure yet when Anna will move but it might be soon, and Abbie will go in September.
So, back to panto – looking forward to a great night out watching it tonight. Tomorrow Orchestra starts again so no chance of a lie-in, but after the main orchestra rehearsal the girls have to miss Chamber to get back in time for the matinee. Then one more performance in the evening and it will all be over. Until next year … maybe!
10 JanWintery weekend
Not a terribly interesting weekend in our house, really.
Orchestra doesn’t start until next Saturday, so I took the opportunity to go to the meeting of the chorister parents’ association on Saturday morning while Josiah was at rehearsals.
After that we came home to find that Steve and the girls had only just surfaced, lazy things! Joe did some piano and tidied his room before his friend came round to play. The girls took practically all day to tidy their room!
Music practices were noisy … Abbie drumming along to Greenday upstairs while Anna accompanied Josiah downstairs, then Anna went up to accompany Abbie’s flute … and that was only before the outing to the sweet shop! They finished off afterwards, and had tea, before settling down to an evening of crafty stuff while Steve and I went out for our anniversary dinner at the Conservatory
On Sunday we woke to more snow falling, and had to be up early for Josiah to go and sing. The girls thought they had a sound rehearsal at Panto but in fact it was just a setting up day and they didn’t have to be there, so they went over to visit Grandma and Grandpa instead. Anna wanted to discuss Professor Layton puzzles with Grandma!
Steve and I decided to go out for a walk in the snow, geocache involved of course! We popped in for coffee with Neil & Ivonne, which was lovely. Then picked the boys up from the Cathedral (we share lifts with another family!), back home to drop one boy off and let the other one get changed, then back to Grandma & Grandpa’s for lunch. Stew and dumplings – the perfect cold day dinner! The kids had a fab time in the snow in their garden, too
Home for music practices (all three children are trying to do 100 days of practise on all instruments, which *is* a bit of a logistical nightmare at times!); Abbie played with Mollie and another panto friend who was round, the girls shopped on the Boden sale website, and then later on we snuggled up with nibbly pic’n'mix tea in front of a film.
Somehow the snow just makes being inside together feel lovelier than usual, it’s been fab
Finally. Wintery or Wintry? Which is correct and why?! Been dithering between which to title the post with and now they both look odd …