just another morning here

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!

Joe wrote a review of Dinosaur King. It’s not quite up yet but you can see if if you know where to look! Anna and I extracted this from him by way of an interview

Anna’s piece on Guitar Hero is up behind the scenes as well …

Otherwise a fairly mundane day; the girls had orchestra this morning while the rest of us tidied up and then played yet more games! This afternoon I took the kids out for a geocache walk while Steve watched the Grand Prix qualifying, and we had a lovely time together - came back wet and muddy though so now I am doing washing! And cooking lasagne. And, in fact, waiting for everyone to come and eat it!

This is one of the games we’ve had to play and review this week, and it’s kept Anna really absorbed.

The other two are playing My Sims Kingdom on the Wii together - Anna and I have yet to get a look in on that one but we must, if one of us is going to write something sensible about it! I’m not going to post the reviews here as obviously they’re written for Game People, but I will link to them when they’re up.

Anyway, Professor Layton is a nice little game, highly recommended for anyone who likes puzzles - there’s a playable demo if you click through the picture to the main website. We’ve enjoyed playing it and then writing about it together - in fact, where has this morning gone? We’ve done nothing else but sit around and play games! Still at least we’re spending time together, but I must get on and do some jobs as well!

So this week we have mainly been playing games I’ve completed Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise bar 2 certificates that I’m still working on. Only 2-3 weeks of completely engrossed play - thank goodness it wasn’t in real time like Animal Crossing!

A while back Steve started writing some reviews for a friend’s gaming site, Game People, and this week the rest of us have been joining in. We may yet get a page up that the children can contribute to (it’s in the pipeline), they have enjoyed having some demo games to play with this week and there are more to come

My articles are in there in various places, attributed to other people, but that’s ok, because it means there’s less pressure to write anything regularly. It is fairly obvious which ones I’ve written, if you know what I’ve been playing and where to look - after all, who else would title a piece ‘I Heart Animal Crossing‘!

We’ve also seen a bit of my family who’ve been around this week, had friends round for a takeaway and official wedding photo viewing last night, but generally not doing a lot, which is the whole point of half term, so I’m happy.

As an aside, I love the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin, it is awesome. I used to dread upgrading my WP but now it’s a few clicks away and all done for me, woo hoo.

We watched ‘Zwartboek‘ (aka ‘The Black Book) last night, and I enjoyed it. I am, as a result, rather enamoured with Sebastian Koch, and may have to rent some more films with him in them …

My sister, meanwhile, was thrashing me at Tetris again (groan) so I have my work cut out there yet again! I have spent the last hour winning one of the games back but still have one to go … and now it’s time to get up and get going anyway. Orchestra and then Anna & Joe both have friends to visit, which means Abbie and I are going to do something together, don’t quite know what yet!

Okay I know it’s Tuesday today but I’m on catchup as it would have been antisocial to blog last night

Drove up here yesterday (just the kids and me). We left about an hour and a half before we needed to so that we could do some Motorway Mayhem caches on the way up, I’ve now got past the number of caches that I said I would find before I hid one of my own so must get that sorted one of these days. Anyway, the kids were saved from doing any more when it started raining around Junction 23 of the M5 so that was that, the rest will have to wait until another day!

Got here and found that Mim & Adam had cooked my favourite dinner, yum After tea we played Guitar Hero, got very hot, watched Dragon’s Den, then went to bed listening to the storms outside.

Back into the swing of termtime; the children had a slower start than me as they had Monday off as a non-pupil day while I was at school. Steve took half of the day off to be with them, they had to go to work with him first though!

I’ve been put into a class team permanently at work, as opposed to being a ‘floating cover’ staff member, so I’m really enjoying that - it means I know things like which days to shave my legs for swimming (!!) and what time my lunch break will be each week! Not only that but I get to know the group of children much better and really feel part of a team working with them. Still absolutely loving my job, and most days we agree, over the dinner table, that my school days are by far the most interesting!

Josiah was persuaded to try choir for the first time on Thursday and came home having absolutely loved it. I’m actually not sure when, recently, I’ve seen him be so sure that he liked something! He walked through the door saying “I am DEFINITELY doing that again”, very excited We’re really pleased for him, not only because he actually is a good little singer, but also because to have gone to a group activity voluntarily is something of a big deal for him, and certainly something he probably couldn’t have done six months ago.

In other musical news he is probably going to sit Grade 2 violin in the summer, which is very scary - not that I don’t think he can do it, but just that an exam like that is very different to anything he will have experienced before, and he’s much younger than the girls were when they first did exams.

Anna came home chuffed having won a prize in a school/Bike-It design a bike flag competition; unfortunately we will only be able to make the last half an hour of the Bike-It picnic after orchestra so she might have to get a friend to pick up the flag on her behalf.

Final excitement of the week was the arrival of Wii Fit. I ummed and aahed over whether to get this on release, didn’t preorder it then regretted it when they were out of stock everywhere! However on Monday night they suddenly re-appeared on the Game website, and since I had some reward points to redeem to make the price tag slightly more palatable, I ordered it - still slightly disbelieving that it would actually arrive on time! But it did, thankfully Parcelforce left it with a neighbour, so we’ve been playing it since we got home.

The weekend is set to include plenty of Wii Fit I imagine, plus some housework, orchestra, and then on Sunday we are going to watch Steve blow up another engine (he’d better not!!) at the Wiscombe Hill Climb. We’re having a meal with friends tonight, then leaving them behind to babysit while we pop to see other friends for some poker; then tomorrow night we have a Hoedown birthday party to go to - Western fancy dress. Busy weekend!