just another morning here

Nothing to see here. We are in ‘just keep swimming’ mode; keeping going until we hit half term. Only two weeks to go.

This half term …

Joe has: lost one trainer and thankfully found it again two weeks later; made it into the A team for rugby so been playing in matches every week; joined hockey club; sung a lot.

Abbie has: had far too much homework, done a fair bit of horsing around, and made a couple of lovely meals for us in Home Ec lessons.

Anna has: played in Oliver! then auditioned for more musical theatre stuff; taken part in a school production of ‘The Witches’ even though we didn’t see her in it because she was ill on the night; enjoyed being ‘in charge’ of the cello section at ECO, but not done enough music practice or worked hard enough on schoolwork…

Steve and I have: just kept facilitating all of the above plus lots that I didn’t mention; taken on two new mechanics at the workshop; and had a surprisingly positive start to a second year of teaching. Steve also bought himself some new CDs – Mary Chapin Carpenter. I’m laughing about this because if you could cross Amy Grant with Nancy Griffith you would pretty much end up with MCC’s music! He is now getting country music recommendations from Amazon

So it’s not all bad, but we are all fairly exhausted!

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I’ve spent the day with 100 or so lovely children at Crealy today, after the first rehearsal of the term yesterday. ECO were playing for our annual ‘Season Opener and Fun Day’, which is always a fairly relaxed concert with plenty of breaks for the Crealy attractions. We were a bit squashed in to a fairly noisy area of the park, but we soon drowned out the noise, and I think everyone had a good time. Particularly pleased with this pic of Josiah

In other news, Oliver! is happening, so Anna has been rushed off her feet playing bassoon for that; she’s really enjoying the experience, her first time playing in a professional band.

Luckily for her, the girls had a brief reprieve with two days off school on Friday and then tomorrow – the fire alarm system at their school is broken so they’re at home until it’s fixed! I gave them housework to do on Friday and school have set them work for tomorrow so they won’t have too much time to kill.

Josiah sang his first service of the year this morning before joining us at Crealy; he’s changed sides in the choir again which will no doubt confuse me when I make it in for evensong later in the week.

My first week with children at school was a bit of a whirlwind but I think everything went ok. This term I’m teaching two days in the Early Years class and then three days in my Key Stage 4 class so I have lots to juggle but I think I’m going to enjoy it. I’ve been going into work very early each day and then not working at home in the evenings which seems to work well for us all round. Steve is here to sort things out and do the morning school run, and then I don’t feel guilty about ignoring the kids because I’m here for them in the evenings. So far so good, anyway.

And so another summer holiday comes to an end. The children celebrated by picking the penultimate day of the holidays to work collaboratively on a junk ‘den’ in the garden, which kept them busy for most of the day yesterday, and they slept in it overnight! Shame they didn’t do it earlier in the summer break really, they could have had more nights out there!

Anna came home from Greenbelt having had a great time as ever, and yet again I’m saying ‘next year’, in a lazy fashion … really MUST go again as a family next year! Well, obviously if we did, Anna would want to disown us and go off on her own, but that would be ok

Last night we had the first of our SWMS mentor sessions. Enjoyed meeting Caroline Diffley and chatting through Anna’s music together – not quite sure where it’s all going to go yet, obviously, and the challenge to practise was the resounding theme of the discussions! We’ve booked tickets to see the SWMS Graduates’ Showcase next week so it will be interesting to hear them perform and see where SWMS has taken them. Anna’s induction day is Sunday; as usual she has to rush off to get to another rehearsal afterwards as she’s playing in the band for Oliver! the week following.

We’re all trying to psych ourselves up for being back at school tomorrow but not really managing – instead ending up just eking out the last few hours of laziness! I have grand goals of how to manage my time better this year, but I’m just slightly daunted by the prospect of having a new class two days in the week, who I don’t know at all. Things are changing dramatically at work for Steve, plus his dad’s going on holiday at the end of the month so it’s going to be a roller coaster half term at least. I need to plan a New Year getaway to look forward to …