just another morning here

… because we have had such a lovely few days at school, and I have a fab set of photos to prove it! Unfortunately a lot of the students have been off ill, so they’ve missed all the fun While that admittedly does make life a bit easier for us all, we’re genuinely missing them and want them back. Today we baked stained glass window Christmas cookies, had our Christmas dinner, which included re-filling party poppers with flour and shaving foam and having a very raucous time (no alcohol involved either!), which the kids thought was hilarious. We raced wind-up reindeer from our crackers, watched a DVD and had a quick practice for our carol service tomorrow. Just lovely. And here’s a photo of yesterday’s sock snowmen – a hit all round.

Dead easy, too – acquire a white sports sock (I bought mine but if you have odd ones lying around they’ll do!) and paint the elastic part. When that is dry, fill with rice up to the heel, and tie a knot in the top. Fold the elastic part back over the knot and this makes the hat, then simply add a scarf to form the head and body, and decorate. It was a hit all round.

Before all of that we had a delicious breakfast for Abbie’s birthday, and she looked pretty excited to see everything in her Chemistry set – she’s dashing off out to Panto rehearsals in a minute so we won’t see much of her this evening but she’s had a good day Happy Birthday!

I’m already in trouble for putting these photos on flickr, which apparently is not blocked from the girls’ school. Neither is this blog

But I liked the photos – Abbie’s enjoyed having the xylophone on loan at home this week, meaning she can practise some of her tuned percussion. We don’t *really* need another instrument in the house, though …

And apparently it was embarrassing that she is wearing matching pyjamas. Now personally, I would have been more embarrassed by non-matching pyjamas …

Huge congrats to the girls for the music exams that they took this term: Anna scored 130, scraping a distinction in her Grade 5 Bassoon. Strangely enough she also scored 130 in Grade 5 piano and cello when she took them a while back!
Abbie took Grade 3 flute and scored a respectable 126, giving her a merit, and her best music exam result so far. She got full marks for her aural!

Josiah hasn’t taken any music exams this term, but he is still pleased to hold the family record for points

We’ve just got home from seeing the Y6 productions at Abbie’s school.

There are two Y6 classes this year, and one of them did a mashup of the Old Testament while the other one did a quick skip through the New Testament. The first production included excerpts from Joseph (and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat), David and Goliath (The Giant Slayer), and Jonah (Jonah Man Jazz) – the second performance was The Gospel Show.

Abbie played Joseph – and then a Philistine, and then a drunken Ninevite – not sure which part she enjoyed the most! Joe and Anna ended up being involved too – Anna supported the Y6 keyboard player in one of the jazzy pieces that he couldn’t quite play, so Joe helped with props. It was a great evening, really loved seeing Abbie and all her friends enjoying themselves