just another morning here

So, I’m at home waiting for the allotted interview hour. Really trying not to get too hopeful but I can’t help it. Abbie made me some special ‘lucky’ earrings in the same colours as my jumper this morning!! Thanks for all the good luck twitters too. I just can’t believe that I wouldn’t get one of the four posts being offered, all my experience and qualifications are in this area, plus I turned down the Apple Store because of the possibility of this one!! Wonder if I’ll find out today anyway? Probably not, they’ll probably keep me in suspense all weekend!

Have had a really full week myself; my parents were in town on Monday as they completed the purchase of a student house here, mainly for my sister to live in next academic year, so I was helping them out for most of Monday. I took on the job of filling it with tenants for the interim six months, so Steve and I have been busy with finishing off the conversion of one room from a lounge into a bedroom and filling it with the appropriate furniture and fittings, to sorting out various other little bits and pieces, answering calls, showing people around, etc. Hopefully by tonight we should have the full complement of rooms let so I feel I’ve done well! Just the broadband to sort out next week. We’ve done the usual work at the garage and at home alongside all that, hence the very busy feeling!

At home things are just ticking over nicely; Anna has had auditions for the Y6 play this week so she’s also in suspense waiting for the casting of that. They’re all happy and enjoying school, with the exception of the odd morning when they’d rather not get up and go out so early, but don’t we all have those?!

Started a new idea with Joe and his violin practice (which can be an area of difficulty in the day) which seems to be going well so far – I make him a tick box list for each day with a few things to practice, and he can tick them off then when they’re done, he’s finished and can do what he likes. This means that however much time he wastes along the way, he still has to play the required things the set number of times. It also means that I can’t put my perfectionism onto him too much by changing the goalposts during the practice session! He likes seeing the goals laid out for him like that, and he seems to be enjoying working through it and colouring in the tick boxes as he goes.

Might try it for the girls as well, actually, as often they whip through their ‘practice’ and I don’t think things are getting practiced enough! The difference is that I attend Joe’s lessons (as is the suzuki expectation) so I know exactly what he should be doing, whereas it’s not quite the same with the girls’ lessons. At some point I really would hope that he would take responsibility for his own practice but we’re not at that stage yet. At least he does really enjoy his lessons when he’s well prepared for them, and feels pleased with himself when his teacher congratulates him on having practiced well during the week, so it *is* paying off and he can see the results of his own hard work.

I splashed out on a Bead Merrily order which arrived on Wednesday and the kids were all absolutely thrilled with the contents. The girls have been beading madly (hence my lucky earrings!), while Joe was over the moon with his treasure digging game (what a mess that made though!) and a paper aeroplane set which is still to be fully explored. I should have kept the parcel until a special occasion really, but hey, sometimes you just want to give your kids gifts for no reason at all other than that you love them. And I do, so I did

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 11:52 and is filed under art and craft, music, school. 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.