01 FebFriends on iPlayer …

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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 …

Category(s): music, school

26 JanNot without a food processor!

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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.

Dinner tonight

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 :roll: ), 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 … ;)

Category(s): cookery, school

25 JanSecond geeky caching post

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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:

UK County Finds map on 11.07.09 Geocaching Stats Summary on 11.07.09

And now today’s:

uk_countyfindsmap.php stat_summary_export.php

Adding in the little graph that shows difficulty and terrain, as I am particularly proud of the 5/5 that we did last year!

terr_diff_combos_export.php

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24 JanJust for the sake of it …

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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 … !

Category(s): general

17 JanProtected: Catalogue of misadventures

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Category(s): general

15 JanPanto Week

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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!

Category(s): dance and drama, school
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10 JanWintery weekend

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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 :)

Snow Daddy Snow happy Getting Grandpa back!

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 …

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07 JanSnow day the second

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Sledging

Had loads of fun out with Abbie’s panto friends this morning. Poor old Anna had to go to school, but she had Bugsy rehearsals all day so she didn’t mind too much. Her music audition was cancelled but has been re-scheduled for tomorrow … and we’re all back to school tomorrow, too. Could be fun on the lane that leads to my school but I’ll be walking so I’ll be fine!

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06 JanSnow Days

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Snow days are always welcome in my house, as long as *I* get the day off as well! Today we weren’t sure which of our schools were going to close or not, so the kids went out in the close really early just in case they’d have to go to school later!

View from my bedroom window at 7am! 7am on 6th January! Mini snowman and friends in the close Snowman built with friends in the close

As it happened, they didn’t; we were all at home. Josiah played for ages with friends in the close, while Abbie joined with other friends and was out and about between houses and the park all day, nearly. Anna did go out, but then was mainly at home working for most of the day. I did very little, I confess! Some orchestra work, a bit of housework, helped Steve bring a car home, but that was about it.

Most of us are off again tomorrow, despite the fact that roads in the city seem mainly ok! Having said that, I didn’t go to housegroup tonight because I didn’t want to drive on the icy roads in the dark at night. Anyway, we’ll see what another day off brings …

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06 JanProtected: Rambly personal post

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Category(s): music, personal, school

05 JanShall I send the piano stool back?

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She doesn’t seem to need it! This clip makes me laugh, too, Steve getting bored of 3 chords, and Josiah paying NO attention to anything but his Wii game …

Fab having piano lessons on the real piano today. Also good to have some encouragement from Anna’s teacher as she’s planning to do a couple of music auditions soon, which we’re madly preparing for, having left it all to the last minute as per usual.

And tonight I am hoping for just enough snow in Devon tomorrow to make it too dangerous for our school buses to run – I know we’ve only just gone back to school but an unexpected day off is always welcome!

Category(s): music
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03 JanI seem to be getting old

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Or at least, I must be old, as I have a teenager for a daughter. All parents of teens are old, right?!

modelling birthday clothes

Anna’s currently picking her way through a new music book that we gave her, which she’d wanted for ages. I may regret buying it for her as she tends to sing along – then again she can sound quite nice these days really!

She took a few friends out for a meal last night, then had films and a sleepover here, and a day in town shopping today. There are benefits to having your birthday fairly soon after Christmas, it seems, as she had loads of giftcards and money to spend, so has had a very lovely day!

Category(s): anna, celebrations
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01 JanParty Poppers at Midnight

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Party Poppers at Midnight!

Fab evening with friends; games, food, fun, chatting, fireworks laid on by the neighbours across the way. And home to blog! A great way to see in the New Year :)

Category(s): celebrations

31 DecAlternative Round up of 2009

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Steve said he enjoyed reading our roundup of the year, as it made us seem like a happy family who did nice things etc. So, especially for him, here are some of the bits that were left out of the other one …

Alarms: 2009 surely the year of the alarm after Josiah changed schools and has to be there at 8am, having fitted in getting ready, breakfast, and often two music practices to boot. My alarm rings very early. Granted, I am usually awake far before it goes off, but still.

Boring evenings: sitting around watching films and surfing the net because actually we don’t have an interesting life. Watching random films that I add to our LoveFilm list because they seem good at the time, then wondering what on earth they are when they actually arrive in the post!

Yelling: oh I’m sure there was plenty of this. At the kids, to get ready, brush teeth, help lay the table/clear the table, brush teeth, practise their instruments, tidy rooms … and at Steve generally for the same thing. Well, he’s quite good at brushing his teeth actually ;) Arguments probably happened, and I know Steve and I questioned what on earth we were doing together a number of times throughout the year. Glad to be ending a year of what felt like traumatic relationship between the two of us and hoping next year won’t feel so awful.

S111TRB – My first number plate, quickly ditched in favour of S222 TRB, but only after we’d actually bought the darned thing did we realise what it looked like on the car! One of our more expensive mistakes (but probably not the most expensive ;) ).

Junk food: as the kids have got older and started doing more diverse things after school we seem to be existing more on convenience food and less on properly cooked meals, fitting in very snatched mealtimes around various activities. This must change next year (well, the cooking, if not the activities)!

The Badman report and all that followed: while not home educating ourselves at the moment, we still identify strongly with the home ed community, and everything that happened politically following the report was Not Good. Best to read about that elsewhere though, as I haven’t kept as abreast of it as I otherwise might have.

There are probably more, but to be honest I prefer the shiny happy version!

Category(s): general

31 DecChristmas is over, Happy New Year

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Time to make way for New Year! We took the tree down today and I must say I wondered why I’d bothered to put it up, since we had hardly anything underneath it anyway! Still, it was sparkly, I suppose.

We’ve done Not Very Much this week, some shopping in town, a lot of lazing around (definitely turned into a teenager house as we’ve only managed to be up by 10am on the one day I had a friend coming over!), eating, playing games, but it’s all been good.

Anyway, realised that I’d forgotten to blog this vid while it was still in season, but better late than never, a montage of the kids’ Christmas music this year, only the choir stuff unfortunately missing.

So the only debate for tonight is: twenty-ten or two thousand and ten? I’m using both at the moment! Whichever it is, I hope your celebrations tonight are fun and that the year ahead is filled with good things, challenges, excitement, and geocaches ;)

Category(s): celebrations, music
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26 DecLovely family day

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You know, sometimes when you point a camera at a bunch of people and ask them to say cheese, the photo comes out really terribly … and other times, like today, it came out beautifully :)

My lovely family!

We had a lovely day up in Oxfordshire today with my side of the family, shared a delicious meal as always, then exchanged gifts and had plenty of time to enjoy them together while lazing around, chatting, joking, drinking tea, playing games, etc. Pretty perfect really – especially as I made time for a quick geocache on the way up! ;)

Boxing Day dinner Classic moment mid-dinner Opening presents
Opening pressies Top Gear Board Game Opening pressies Opening pressies
Playing with lego Playing with ipods Ramses Pyramid lego game Longest word in the game

I will have to add a photo of me and my gift soon, as no-one had the decency to take one today – I got one of these funky umbrellas so I’m waiting for a dark wet evening to go out with it!

Category(s): celebrations
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25 DecOur first Cathedral Christmas

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As a chorister, Josiah had commitments at the Cathedral over the past few days, and will have at Christmas time for the next four years too, so we thought we’d better join in! Actually Joe decided to board, which he thought was a huge treat. We missed him here, as it was very quiet indeed, but he had a ball.

We went to the Cathedral for the Christmas Eve service yesterday, and popped in to see Joe at the boarding house afterwards. Traditionally choristers are allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve so we gave him that last night, and then waved him goodbye until today.

This morning was very peaceful at home – the girls were really pleased with their outfits in place of stockings today.

Showing off their new gear
Woot, a Primark Giftcard! Opening gifts Yum

We had breakfast then opened the few presents that were here before setting off in time for matins at the Cathedral. Russ & Marg represented the family at the first morning service (not that Joe spotted them!) and we did the others!

After Matins we went over to the school for Christmas dinner. This was optional, of course, and we’d opted in, thinking we might as well just join in – then had second thoughts when we realised how big an event it was! Quite overwhelming really, as we don’t know anyone yet!

First came drinks and nibbles etc., then after that it was dinner time – 109 people seated in the school gym! It felt like a wedding … Steve and I both helped with serving/clearing away which at least gave us something to do, but otherwise we were quite glad we’d been seated at the end of a table so we didn’t have to do *too* much chatting.

Ho ho ho ... Christmas lunch in ECS gym! Serving Christmas dinners Chorister at Christmas dinner

The girls were really good, especially as Joe abandoned them to go and play with his friends in the playground; they spent the mealtime planning our family day that we’re looking forward to on Sunday!

This little clip from Josiah probably deserves a place here ;)

After dinner there were a couple of short thank you speeches, and then what is apparently traditional entertainment, of any old choristers getting up to sing together! By the time that was over it was 3.40pm and time for the choristers to go back to the Cathedral, a quick tidy up in the gym, and then we joined them in time for evensong, which was lovely.

Phew.

Collected Josiah and all his clobber after the service, and I think he’s managed not to leave anything behind! Can’t say I wasn’t glad to leave after all that – it felt like a long day to me and I know we hadn’t done all of what some families had. That said, it was fun as well – very different to any Christmas day I’ve had before! Can safely say I’ve had my fix of Christmas music this year, too. Josiah looked exhausted, we’re not sure how much sleep the boarders got last night!

From there we went over to Grandma & Grandpa’s house for tea and presents. They had a houseful too, but it was relaxing and fab to exchange gifts with them all :) Didn’t think I’d particularly over-eaten during the day but I feel pretty stuffed now!

Opening gifts Grandad was pleased with his calendar ECO Mugs Opening the outside oil lamp

We left there around 8pm and came home – had to watch Doctor Who before anyone went to bed though – some things are Very Important, you know. We have another long day tomorrow so we’ll be following the kids to bed shortly, I imagine :)

Category(s): celebrations
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24 DecAbbie’s birthday treat

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Steve and I took Abbie and her friend up to the LG Arena in Birmingham to see Miley Cyrus in concert last night :) They had a fab time, though on balance it was a long haul for us!

At the LG Arena for Miley Cyrus concert! At the LG Arena for Miley Cyrus concert! At the LG Arena for Miley Cyrus concert! At the LG Arena for Miley Cyrus concert!

Meanwhile Anna stayed with Grandpa and Grandma, helping Grandpa with labelling and stamping 1600 envelopes for a mailshot. Josiah is staying at the Cathedral school boarding house while singing his way through Christmas. We’ll see him later on …

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