just another morning here

Everyone needs a little half term craft project to work on, yes? (No, honestly, I could have done without it!)

Josiah’s French teacher set them the task of making a clock this half term – and she offered a possibly edible prize for the best one. Madame Stewart is well known for dishing out sweets in return for learning French vocab etc., so this was enough to spur Joe into action. I did help him a little bit, I confess. Well, it was more interesting than my own work!

I’m not sure that Mme Stewart will thank Josiah for it being quite such a BIG clock, but hey ho, she didn’t specify size! Et maintenant, c’est l’heure du petit dejeuner

Apart from the exam results (still keep repeating ’134′ to myself in awe and amazement!), we’ve had a good day all round.

The children have been wanting to go ‘fun’ swimming for a while, and I’d said we could go over the holidays; today was so successful that we will more than likely repeat the trip I expect! We went down to Torquay’s Riviera Centre, which, believe it or not, is the nearest pool with a chute and wave machine. The children swam (on their own – hurrah for them all being over 8!) and I sat in the cafe drinking coffee.

When they finally got out we walked across to Torre Abbey (didn’t go in though, will save that for our next visit) and had a picnic, then followed it up by visiting Antony Gormley’s ‘Field for the British Isles’ exhibition in the Abbey’s Spanish Barn. Abbie reckons she might have made some of the figures, at the Craft Fair in Bovey Tracey back in June – I don’t know, it’s possible that figures made there were used here, but she couldn’t recognise hers among the crowds anyway The kids fancied playing mini-golf too but that’s something to save for another visit as well. I did a little geocache instead!

We came home after that and Anna baked white chocolate brownies – it’s good, this enthusiasm for cooking! Abbie’s banana bread from yesterday is still my favourite this week though.

Steve turned up at home too, having won his class at Mamhead today, so he was happy as well. Topped off the good results with Joe’s phonecall to his violin teacher!

Torbay Motor Club, who run the hillclimb events at Mamhead, have a now traditional hog roast on the Saturday night, so Steve and I went back out to that this evening. Any extra money raised from this is donated to the church of St. Thomas which is on the Mamhead estate, and tonight they’d opened it up for us to look around. Sadly I only had my iphone camera with me, so these will have to do – but it was fab. I love looking around church buildings anyway, I must admit. This was a tiny church really, quaint, and very pretty – especially with the amazing view over the Exe estuary as well. We were able to climb right up into the tower to see the bells and the view from the top – the stairs to get there were a bit hairy but it was worth it!

Left fairly promptly as I fancied watching the Proms tonight, as they’re playing lots of classic MGM musical film themes. Really enjoying the whole thing, but especially Kim Criswell (stunning!) and the big band style of the orchestra, it’s fabulous! Even more incredible when I read on the RT site that in fact the original MGM orchestrations were ‘lost’ at some point, so the conductor of the orchestra has actually re-written the music from the films. Wow. Anyway, a nice evening vegging out with Steve and Saturday night tv (perhaps with some added ice cream) is a perfect end to a lovely day

Joe brought this picture home from school the other day, after some time spent studying Monet’s Waterlilies, obviously! I really like it – might even be one of the rare pieces of schoolwork that we keep around here!

We had a day of torrential rain yesterday, which didn’t matter too much as all we had to fit in was orchestra, Suzuki group lesson, and then Anna and I went out to Exmouth in the evening for a Youth Orchestra concert. That was quite amusing actually, they were performing alongside the Exmouth Shanty Men, who (obviously) sang sea shanties, unaccompanied bar a drum, in period costume. Very entertaining.
Also the first time I have had to administer first aid while on duty at an orchestra concert; the youngest member of EYO managed to trip over something and bump his nose right between the eyes, and it came up in a big lump just like on a cartoon. Managed to find a little bag of frozen peas from the church kitchen (luckily a well stocked church!) and after 10 mins of holding that on his nose it looked much better!

Today, thankfully, dawned bright and clear. We got up and left the boys in bed (or on Wii) and went down to Bovey Tracey for the Contemporary Craft Fair with Ruth, Caitlin and Riona. My girls had been with them before but I hadn’t; plenty to do and see there, they enjoyed making stuff in the children’s craft tent and I enjoyed looking around the various exhibitions. Managed not to spend too much money! Ruth took some nice photos of the girls there … not sure what was going on with the dog!

After lunch I abandoned the rest of them and went off caching; ever since getting to 197 finds last week I’ve been itching to get another three! Happily did that this afternoon, and then another two which were killers, on the coast again, down steep hills both times – I’m tired! My arms were already hurting from playing too much DK Jungle Beat on the Wii yesterday, now my legs hurt as well, and I got somewhat scratched and stung in the hunt for one elusive cache as well. Oh well, it was all good fun, and the sun shone. Absolutely MUST set one of my own soon.

Home for dinner, some tidying up and laundry sorting (much to everyone else’s disgust – yes it *does* need doing before Monday morning) and looking forward to the final of the Apprentice in a minute