just another morning here

Good day all round here, in our various places. Well actually I’ve not checked whether Steve had a good day at work or not but he’s gone out now so I’ll have to wait.

Abbie spent most of the day with Grandma & Grandpa. She was pleased about this for a number of reasons, not least their undivided attention! She had already asked Marg to help her with a viking tunic, so they did that together which was a great help (ok, I know even I could have managed to cut/sew a tabard, but now I don’t have to!). The other main reason Abbie was happy was so that she didn’t have to get dragged around to the other two’s musical events!

Anna played in a cello concert this morning – very well as usual. Annoyingly so, in fact, as she’s been rushing through the piece sounding like a screeching horrible out of tune thing at home!! So she might find me the most annoying mother in the world (and i’m sure I am) for making her practice daily but she does at least admit that it pays off, when she knows she’s played nicely and receives compliments from other parents.

From Anna’s concert, she, Joe and I went on to have lunch in town. I haven’t been to Macdonalds in town on a Saturday lunchtime for a long time and I’m not sure I want to repeat the experience anytime soon, but it did make for some fascinating people-watching.

Then we carried on from there to a Suzuki Group lesson in a village hall out on the other side of town. I have been quietly dreading it for weeks, given my experiences with any combination of Joe, violins, and groups of unknown people before now! However, it turned out really well. We got there early enough for Joe and Anna to play in the park for a while beforehand, then went in and got started. Josiah started to do his usual ‘I’m not going to join in’ routine, until the point where it got so exciting that Anna dashed back to the van to get her cello so that *she* could join in, so he decided he would as well. Anyone want to know what the excitement was? Oh yes, they were balancing hula hoops on their bows. You would have thought Anna had never eaten a hula hoop before, she moved so fast!

Anyway, Joe joined in then with a number of games/activities before giving up towards the end; he didn’t ‘perform’ either of the pieces he’d prepared to play with the others but he’d given the whole thing a good effort so I was really pleased with him. He finds this sort of group thing really really difficult, especially with a bunch of people he doesn’t know. He wouldn’t stand with the others, but had to stay near me – that was ok though as the line of children snaked around to where I was sitting anyway! It was definitely a help to have Anna there joining in with him (and she enjoyed it too – must make sure she can manage to play Twinkle on her A string before the next one!). And tbh they played one of the performance pieces a fair bit faster than Joe’s been playing it so I’m not sure he would have kept up even if he had joined in, so probably better (for him at this point in time) not to have done it and failed, than to have tried and felt like a disaster. I think he actually enjoyed himself, which is just the best outcome I could have wished for, that is the whole point of learning an instrument and playing with other people. I really enjoyed it too, actually

So that was our day. We picked Abbie up and stopped for a cuppa with Grandma & Grandpa, then came home. Cleaned out the hamster, hoovered downstairs, washed the kitchen floor, then settled down for a film before dinner.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 24th, 2007 at 19:56 and is filed under general, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.