just another morning here

I’m totally too busy to blog, especially as I’m playing the newest generation of Animal Crossing! But we had a good weekend with lots of other stuff in it too, so I thought I should write something quickly.

Saturday was a music day: the girls had orchestra in the morning, Joe and Anna had a Suzuki practice in the afternoon, and then the evening was ECO’s Autumn Concert. We had Grandad and Nanna here for dinner before taking them to the concert too - and it was good fun as usual. Novelty of taking photos of orchestra has worn off I think as they’re pretty much the same! Anna’s orchestra friend (the one who moved to Reading) came down for the weekend so we had her to stay for a couple of nights.

In the midst of this I was hugely excited to pick up a review copy of Animal Crossing: Let’s go to the City. Had problems porting my DS character into it though so that took up the rest of the weekend for me! Can’t manage to wifi easily at the moment though, timezone problems plus the fact that I’m not able to play enough!

Sunday we went to church (me, Abbie and Joe), town (Anna and her friend), and the kit car show (Steve and his dad. I would have gone but the kids didn’t want to). All back home for dinner, and I invited Riona over for tea too because she saved me by lending me her AC:WW game card!

Back to work on Monday then dashed around doing various things after school before ending up at this Excellence in Exeter evening. We really didn’t have a clue what it was all about but Anna was receiving an award as well as singing in her school choir so we dressed up and went out.

Kind of giggled as her award was for ’sporting and artistic endeavour’ but hey, she was the only one in her year at school who got it, so she must have done something to earn it! I suspect it’s probably music related but we don’t get to find out why each child was nominated. Still very (VERY) proud of her. The choir were good too, we met a few friends whose kids also got awards there, and there was even some food at the end of the ceremony.

Must get up and get on now, we have another new child starting in our class today (the second this term!). And it’s another day when I think about Animal Crossing all day but can’t actually make time to play it! Oh I’m so sad! Scrabble turns will get played I promise, one of these days

I rang Steve’s parents a couple of days ago, wondering if we could pop up to their house on November 5th, as they live on a hill on one side of the city where you can see all the way across to the other side. I thought we’d just pop over after tea for a cuppa and watch whatever fireworks were going on, have some sparklers, then go home again.

However, somehow, over the past couple of days it turned into a bit of a party where they laid on hot dogs and fireworks, we took soup, rolls, and sparklers, and we all had a lovely time watching our own fireworks as well as all those across the city!

It was a lovely evening Got home around 9ish and I decided that was a good time for me to go to bed, along with the kids - still seething that I am quite so tired after last night’s election results. I was going to stay up and play some more Little Big Planet, which we got today - Josiah took over earlier and I really need to play the first few levels myself!

Whose daft idea was this?! It’s bad enough getting 5 people in one of these, let alone 19! Think it worked pretty much ok though. We had a nice day. And did a bonus geocache on the way home

When we were home educating I used to love Crealy, it was a haven of peace and quiet during school hours, and I could spend ages just sitting reading while the children played. Now, however, it is school holidays and weekends when we go, it’s so much busier, and it’s pretty awful! But the kids still love it, and so when Josiah asked to have his birthday party there we agreed. He invited four friends from school, plus him and the girls, so seven children to keep track of - plus Robyn, who thankfully came with Adam and Emma which added to the adult-child ratio!

Anyway, it was loud, chaotic, we mislaid various children at different times, but I think everyone had a good time. And now it’s over, no more birthday parties for a good six months. And no more at Crealy ever again, if I have my way! At least now they’re all over 7 they can go on rides by themselves!

Came home for Father’s Day roast dinner with Steve’s dad here too, played Joe’s new wii game together, and now have slumped. Kids have a non-pupil day tomorrow so they’re home with Steve while I still have to work so I’ll be up early on my own for once.

Started the day with presents, as you do on a birthday. Josiah was up early but the girls kept him waiting by staying in bed until 7am, meanies!

We were sad last night to hear that the orchestra conductor was ill, but rather relieved that it meant that the planned concert was cancelled, it was really nice to have a relaxed morning. We headed into town and on the way stopped at the garage to visit Grandpa - Josiah very pleased with the gift of Ticket to Ride from Grandma & Grandpa, and equally pleased with birthday money from Great-Grandad, to add to some from my parents.

In town we successfully found new sandals for Joe (last year’s fell apart), trainers for Anna (hers 2 sizes too small) and school shoes for Abbie (hers 1.5 sizes too small). Abbie will have to make do with hand-me-down sandals and Anna will have to buy some cheap ones! I got some trainer-style walking boots as my choices for walking are old DMs that leak, or wellies, neither of which are that great for walks really. We ended up in the toymaster shop where Josiah spent a bit of his money on a Dr Who Sonic Screwdriver, and he’s had great fun with it all day.

Home for lunch, and then Steve went with the kids over to the field where they played frisbee and boomerang (another birthday money acquisition), while I cleaned out the guinea pigs and made a rather nice looking (even if I do say so myself) chocolate cake for Joe’s party tomorrow. Anna looked at it as I took it out of the oven and said, in surprised tones, “wow, it worked!”. I’ve obviously baked too many cakes that haven’t worked recently

After that we all went out together to Josiah’s group violin lesson so that we could go on from there to do a walk/cache hunt. The group lesson was good, it’s so lovely to see Josiah with so much more confidence than he had in the same situation not that long ago! Found the cache easily afterwards and then mucked around with self timer shots but we are rubbish at them!

Home for dinner which was a Pizza Hut style tea at Josiah’s request - pizza, dough balls, and then Ice Cream Factory for dessert. Terribly unhealthy but we did drink fruit juice to try and compensate

Am not popular at the moment for calling quiet time in bed after Dr Who, but we have a long day of partying to get through tomorrow so I needed some! Can’t quite believe this is the third 7th birthday recorded on this blog (here’s the first and here’s the second), are they growing up too fast or have I been blogging for too long?

Having a birthday on a Saturday somehow seems to lead to the whole weekend being in one’s honour, although I’m not complaining as that makes it a nice couple of days for everyone else as well

We’ve done some lovely things including a freebie breakfast (just Steve and me, thanks to vouchers on Bonne Maman jam!) at Cafe Rouge, while the kids were at orchestra (Josiah hanging in there, he’s finding it hard work but still enjoying it). Chose some new CDs, always a nice way to spend birthday money. Home for lunch, the qualifying, cleaning out the guinea pigs and some manic cake-baking, then back out to the cinema to watch Indiana Jones - which we all really enjoyed

In the evening family and friends had turned up to watch Eurovision with us - plenty of drinks and food, but I must say I got bored by the end of the programme. A fun night anyway.

Today we had a lazy start, brunch (days that start with croissants are always good in my opinion!), and a geocache hunt.

After that some of us watched the Grand Prix while the rest played on the Wii, we popped to Steve’s parents’ for a cup of tea, then had dinner out at the Jack in the Green (putting Steve’s rubbish photos up just for the record!).

Got home in time to bid on an extremely important ebay auction (Y6 prom dress for Anna ) and finished off the day with another film.

All my scrabulous games are going terribly, but apart from that life is sweet and I’m looking forward to mooching around with the kids over the next few days and having a chilled out half term

We all went to Crealy today to celebrate Robyn’s 3rd birthday. It was sunny but really windy which made it feel cold, I wished I’d worn more clothes! Had a lovely day anyway and the kids all enjoyed themselves