I consider myself so lucky that the regular (not quite daily, but almost!) ‘school run’ that I do is to collect boys from evensong – and if I can make it there in time, I attend the service – I actually love evensong. The ritual, the ceremony, the music, the space, the time for contemplative thought and prayer – it is easy to find God in the words of psalms, anthems, and the readings too.

Anyway. Last night was a mayoral service and Josiah was honoured to be chosen to sing a solo in the first performance of the Magnificat by Jonathan Lee. Definitely a proud parent moment.

Other clips from the service are here too …

Steve had to work and race, so he didn’t stay with us, although he did take us there (in a lovely K-reg Rover which only just made it – it was the only car that we had with a towbar!) and help us set up (how kind of him! it was payback for the day’s cover I did at the garage ). Unfortunately this also meant we had to wait for him to collect us at the end, which did entail a long wait and a late night! I managed to disassemble the trailer tent singlehandedly (though I’m still not entirely sure I could put it up on my own), which may have been shooting myself in the foot for any future occasions, but we’ll see.

The children spent the vast majority of their time playing games; Set, Uno, and Jungle Speed. I may finally have to give in and buy our own set of Jungle Speed …

Spring (no snow here), hope, new life, the celebration of the crux of my faith, time with family and usually plenty of food and chocolate, makes for a good Easter!

We had a lovely day, from the hot cross buns and Grand Prix start to the morning, through church where Josiah did a short drama with his friend Billy as part of the service, and then a pleasant afternoon spent at Grandma & Grandpa’s house along with Steve’s sister and her family.

Yesterday we spent the day in town. Firstly we tried to take back a cello string that had snapped after a week. I was incredulous that the one music shop in town was closed, I mean, I know it’s a bank holiday but if it were my shop, I’d have kept it open. Anyway.

We wandered down through town, doing a bit of shopping in various places, and ended up at the Cathedral Green in time for a re-enactment of the Crucifixion. We hadn’t quite been spiritual enough to follow the whole Easter story as it had been acted out in various locations in town but it was good to be part of the finale. It was absolutely freezing; Anna commented that the guys up on the crosses next to Jesus really didn’t have to act much to look like they were in pain, and she was right!

From there we went down to Ivonne‘s birthday party where we had some delicious cake and a Wii bowling game to celebrate. The kids were starting to get a bit hyper and annoying by this point, Steve was selling cars so he was late arriving and we left pretty much as soon as he got there!

Invited more friends over for a roast dinner and a showing of La Vie en Rose in the evening, and that was great – the food and the film, not to mention the company

Today has been fairly boring really; we went into town and got a new cello string, popped in to Sainsbury’s, did some music practices, some jobs around the house, Anna went to play with a friend who lives a half hour drive away so that took an hour out of the morning, the other two made a nice looking Easter cake, and they all did some Easter crafty stuff.

Joe had a friend to play in the afternoon, supposedly to practice a short drama they are doing at church tomorrow, but also just to play. Billy came bearing tadpoles for us which was very exciting (for me!). Sorted out guinea pigs both here and at friends’ while they’re away, dropped Billy off, picked Steve up, came home and cooked some dinner. Anna was dropped home and they all got into pyjamas to snuggle in front of Saturday night tv, which is nice, even if we have ended up in front of 2 different programmes!

The wet night did make the whole site a bit muddy for a couple of days but nothing too terrible on our side of the site anyway. My parents did have a bit of a Kessingland week in their awning though, and ended up throwing their groundsheet away rather than cleaning it! Think swamp mixed with cowpats and you have the general idea, yuk.

We were camped with friends from one of the other churches in the network, which was nice, because we were the only campers there from our own local church, so it meant that the children had friends to play with, I had more hair to braid (!!) and we had friends to laze around and share coffee and wine with

Saw a number of old friends throughout the week which was nice, and we also saw rather a lot of my youngest brother as well, who clearly had too much time on his hands and kept coming back to be clambered on by small girls – lovely to have him around though.

The organised ‘churchy’ activities (for want of a better word!) consisted of various meetings most mornings and in the evenings too, as well as sports and other stuff going on during the afternoon. The children all had groups to go to, which they really enjoyed and got lots out of. I was on a team helping with the 3 and 4 year olds during the morning sessions, which was a lot of fun.

We had a couple of free days as well, where we escaped the site (it was *so* noisy!) and did our own thing. On the first day we went to Herstmonceux Science Centre where we met some of the Screamteam and most of the Monsterteenies, and had a fab day there. (I didn’t ever get my email from the Art Machine by the way, what happened to that I wonder?!)

On our other day off we ended up in Eastbourne visiting Ros & Tony at Bonners Music Superstore. Steve made himself at home immediately and made a long phonecall but for some reason didn’t want me to take a photo Anna made herself at home too We didn’t spend too much money though!

Mooched around Eastbourne for a while, then went swimming again, then ended up at Pevensey Castle on the way back to the campsite. Fab castle with lots of interesting different parts added over the years. Tried desperately to get a picture of all three children looking nice at the same time but after four attempts I gave up!

We spent a fair bit of time enjoying Ashburnham again; it is a gorgeous site. Tried hard to get the camera to do things it isn’t really cut out to do with the lens I was using but the results weren’t too bad, all things considered.

As an aside, my Flickr post bar has miraculously sprung back into life tonight after months of not recognising me as a user – don’t know what happened there but I’m very glad to have it back!

Got a bit of washing done today but generally lazed around as we were fairly exhausted. Our wonderful neighbour(s) had done a fantastic job with the guinea pigs which was an extra blessing.

They keep almost reciting lines from the various cds and then being gobsmacked when I finish the lines (“how come you know them *all*, mum?!”), which are indelibly inscribed in my brain from years of listening to them when I was a kid. They are cheesy, American, and now 25 – 30 years old but still so much good stuff in them and I love them so I’m completely chuffed that the kids are enjoying them so much Mark, if you are reading this, they are hoping you’ll do a Risky Rat thing for them at Christmas as apparently my Risky Rat voice isn’t up to much

Meanwhile those of us left behind did a whole load of crafty bits preparing some Stations of the Cross symbolic pictures (with slight adaptations on our part ) to use as part of our Good Friday meal.

Kids have done beading, drawing, played on the piano/other musical instruments and generally been great, got along well, and enjoyed themselves.

Just had roast lamb which was yummy, and in the middle of the meal shared the Stations of the Cross stuff which was good – I like to mark Good Friday, even if the children still insist on calling it Bad Friday. Ice cream was pretty scrummy too, topped with chocolate bunnies. And for those of you who are au fait with the Veggie Tales there were a few very bad renditions of the Bunny Song included, just for good measure. Confused? Me too! Just SING the SONG!

I have time to blog because I cooked, so the clearing up and children-to-bed stuff is happily happening without me … we’re playing bongos and then planning to watch a film later too.

I can really identify with this article, actually – for us the journey into home education was synonymous with much of our church-exploration-thinking, so it was nice to hear someone put it into words.

Not sure quite where it leaves us now, but that’s another story!

And found on the discussion forum afterwards, just putting it here for my own interest really – an article from the Guardian on ACE curriculum/schools.

Otherwise life is back to boring humdrum carry on … with one highlight for Josiah – this week he is the ‘special person’ in his class at school. This caused rather huge excitement over the weekend as he gathered together bits and bobs to take in to school. I failed to produce a photograph though, just don’t do paper photos any more – they’re either good enough to be on the wall in a frame, or they’re on the computer, nowhere inbetween, and I don’t have a printer! Ah well.

Being ‘special person’ apparently means you get to stand at the front of the line every time the class lines up for something, take the register back to the library, and on Friday they get to do show and tell about their stuff/photos which has been sitting on a table all week.

Perhaps it would be worth adopting this approach at home too; less arguments about who should push the coffee down, sit in the front of the car, have the first bath, or choose which game to play!

We stopped in the park on the way home so Joe came home all muddy and I made him strip so that I could wash his uniform. He refused to put any more clothes on to go and play outside with the girls, so he and I spent a happy hour hamaing together, having been inspired by Merry’s flickr pictures.

He chose a pirate pattern to follow, from one of the pattern books. Swords do it every time

I don’t think he’d ever really bothered following a pattern before, only followed the shape of a board, iyswim, so I showed him how to count it, and we did a pretty good joint effort. He’s really pleased with his pirate, and I’m thinking of taking it to stick it up on the ‘special person’ board in place of Joe’s photo tomorrow!