(There, Steve, was that good enough? )

My friend Merry is taking on UK distribution for Rubens Barn and is giving away a doll from her blog, so go and have a look, leave a comment – and visit Play Merrily to see the full range

(There, Merry, was that good enough?!)

Monday: practice for school play at my school, Josiah’s first performance (daytime), [swimming lessons as usual], my work meal out.

Tuesday: school play at my school, [piano lessons as usual - no TKD today though as it clashed with play start time] Josiah’s second performance (evening; Steve went to see it as Abbie & Joe ended up doing the same show, so neither of us fancied watching the same thing twice!).

Wednesday: Christmas party at the Donkey Sanctuary for me, including Christmas dinner. Donkey days are a highlight of my school life!

Thursday: Abbie’s performances, one in the daytime [insert choir practice and cello lesson in here] and one in the evening (my turn to be the audience).

Friday: Abbie and Joe’s Christmas school dinner [violin lesson, youth clubs (2) as usual, during which I will have to shop for Abbie's party, argh party bags].

We will have a brief interval in the Christmas activities over the weekend in order to fit Abbie’s birthday in, but even then we’ve got a couple of Christmas things to go to! Also have to manage some work at the garage as I think it’s probably the first Saturday since September that I’ve been able to get into the office.

In other news we have challenges of the business variety as our wonderful mechanic was taken ill at the weekend. He will almost certainly be off work until the New Year at least, and probably not be back to full fitness for a very long time after that. The workshop was the one part of the business that hadn’t suffered due to recession, but hey ho. Steve seems fairly calm about everything but I am worrying.

And this is why Animal Crossing is so nice to play, there is no recession and you can easily make a few million bells just by selling turnips – escapism rules ok.

Just upgraded to WP 2.7 here, I quite like the new format. Tired and should be asleep though so must sign off for the night.

Bit worried about the garage at the moment … wondering how long the recession might go on for as it does seem to be filtering down. I try to ignore it while Steve tries to fix it – both pretty useless reactions really, somewhere in the middle might be a good plan.

Anyway back to tonight: dinner, wine, X Factor, Animal Crossing, Casualty, and at this rate the children currently fighting over pieces of electronics kits will be going to bed early so it should be a peaceful evening!

However, and it is the only thing we could find to pick on, apparently there is a missing ‘minus’ in the quotation about earnings! Steve says, for the record, his answer was that his garage could earn from ‘minus 50k to 100K’.

Edited to add: The article came about completely by chance. Apparently LB was in the city doing a similar article on a Met Office worker, and wanted to find a car salesperson to interview for the series, and just contacted Steve from the phone book (or google, whatever he used, I don’t know!). Not quite sure what made Steve say yes, it’s quite unlike him really!

So I had a happy couple of child-free hours to walk and hunt. We picked Josiah up and did one more cache on the way back, which is why he’s in one of the photos too! Especially pleased with the cache where I’m in the photo – firstly it was a satisfying puzzle to solve, and then it was a cool cache hide as well

Steve won his class at Wiscombe hillclimb again today (no Cosworth, yawn), while his dad was doing the honours for us at the Guildhall Motor Show, which we did last year and it was good enough for us to want to repeat the experience this year as well. Steve and I will be there tomorrow so if you read this and you’re in town during the day, then pop and see us.

We are completely knackered. Had to be up really early both days in order to get kids dropped off/cars into the shopping centre before any people showed up. And being nice to people all weekend is clearly more than I can take! Same goes for repeating the same sales pitch type lines:
Would you like to enter our competition? Guess how many balloons are in the van.
No, it’s free to enter (don’t bother reading the fluorescent signs announcing the FREE COMPETITION! all over our cars).
No, there aren’t any in the back of the van, just in the cab.
Well done, we’ll ring you if yours is the closest guess! (unless you are aged around 10, and forget to put your dialling code on your entry, in which case we’ll spend hours searching on BT until we find you – story tbc!)
Can I interest you in £25 off your next service? What car do you drive? Are you thinking of changing your car soon?

Still, it was a good weekend, and probably really worthwhile. We chatted to loads of people, and Russ even sold one of our cars yesterday! Guess time will tell how good it was if/when we see vouchers come into the workshop, or have any customers into the sales office who arrive because of the show.

The children spent one day being spoiled by Grandma and the next day being spoiled by their Great Aunty Jacky so they’ve not had too bad a weekend either! Anna did a trial at the Exeter Children’s Orchestra yesterday and really enjoyed that, she is considering dropping Stage by Stage after Christmas in favour of the orchestra this year, no final decision yet though.

Now wondering if everything is ready for Monday morning – if it’s not, tough, because I am too tired to do it. Another weekend where I really think our household would fall apart if we both worked full time, we have lived on takeaway and been fit for nothing by 8pm!

I had taken the wrong lens for indoor photography (doh) and Josiah was intent on following the leaflet he was given with numbered points of interest to look at in the Cathedral (in unswervingly numerical order and without looking at anything else, honestly, sometimes I worry about that boy), so we didn’t take many photos inside, and then it started drizzling, so our outdoor photos are a bit rubbish too, but we had fun anyway. I wished I had my f30 actually, but it is mysteriously broken and has been sent back to fuji to see what they can do with it.

Back home in time to meet the girls, then I helped them get their homework done and they had soup for tea before going out to Friday Fish (the church’s children’s group), which they really enjoyed. And tonight we have just crashed, as we have got a really early start tomorrow!

Yesterday we had Caitlin and Riona with us, took Esther back to the station early afternoon, and then the new term began with Anna’s first cello lesson later on in the afternoon. Incidentally, she passed her Grade 4 cello (108), don’t think I ever blogged that. And Abbie passed both the Grade 1s (piano 114 & recorder 107) that she took at the same time.

In the evening the girls both sharpened all their pencils and got their uniforms ready, and I think they even managed an early night – certainly they were in bed by the time I got home from an aborted Miscarriage Support Group meeting (forgot the keys, oops. still saw one person though and had a good chat on the stairs instead!).

Today the girls were back at school, and obviously pleased about it as they were both up and ready way earlier than necessary!

Josiah and I have had a relatively good home-ed day too. He did a couple of workbook pages from a music and a maths book, just to try and get back into the swing of doing something each day. He seems to have forgotten how to write all his numbers!

Then we did his music practices together, then made a picnic while signing up for Education City again, in order that I don’t feel too guilty about hours spent in the office, our next destination. By the way, does anyone still have a valid ‘refer a friend’ code that I could use when I actually have to sign up properly in 10 days’ time? Steve and I had a business meeting to attend together so Josiah amused himself with Education City on the computer at work while we did that.

The plan after that was to head to Home Ed group, which I assumed would have started back today, but the park was empty. Joe was a bit disappointed – I really should have checked beforehand as I probably had the info in an email somewhere. Ah well, there’s always next week. We had our lunch in the park anyway, and it gave us the chance to have a good chat about a couple of goals for home ed, which was good. Joe’s decided he’d like to try making a lapbook about the Romans, so that gives us something projecty to do alongside basic workbook things. He was only 18 months old when the girls did their first ever home ed project on the Romans so I don’t suppose he can remember much about it – in fact thinking about it, they did it with Aunty Jacky and I took him out to the park while she was there, so I can’t remember much either!

Anyway, then we headed back to the garage to get a few more things sorted; we’ve got a stand in the local shopping centre’s ‘Motor Show’ next weekend so there are some extra things that need doing for that.

Now we’re home for piano lessons. Still chasing my tail with lots of paperwork to catch up on so better stop blogging and get on with it!