just another morning here

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!

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?

Can’t really think of how to sum up our weekend as we did loads - as well as having a fair bit of time to relax with family which was lovely.

On Saturday the girls had Orchestra as usual. While they were there Josiah and I went to a little art cafe in town for an Easter Egg making workshop which was great. The cafe itself was lovely (although I can imagine if I start going too much it could get very expensive, especially if the girls were there!), and the workshop was good too, as was the time spent with friends

After that came a manic hour and a half where I dashed round town picking up my sister and all her stuff from her Uni halls of residence, Anna from Orchestra (Steve had picked Abbie up an hour earlier), we came home to drop off the cello, pick up an extra seat for the car as well as our overnight stuff, sleeping bags etc., and have a hurried lunch, then drove back out to the sports club where the kids have swimming lessons for their Gala Presentation. Very important to be there as I’d had inside information that Joe had won some medals so we couldn’t miss his moment of glory! He was pleased with his two bronzes and we were really proud of him, although he did whisper to me later that he would rather have won silver or gold (wonder where he gets that from?!). Next year!

From there we drove straight to my parents’ house in Oxfordshire, where we had a lovely roast dinner and a nice evening of tv and games. Steve and I woke up at some unearthly hour to watch the Australian Grand Prix (well, I didn’t stay awake for all of it but I showed willing!), while the others slept. More time for chatting and eating (croissants etc.!) this morning before we left. Really love having a young brother and sister - not only are they lovely people for me to spend time with but it’s really nice to see the children relating to them too, there’s something special about having an uncle and aunt so close to your own age, as opposed to those who are nearer your parents’ age, I think.

We planned to stop at Cribbs Causeway on the way home, having failed to remember that this would add about two hours to the journey just sitting in the queue to get in! Still, I found some shoes for work (like these except black - boring I know but practical!) and Josiah found some new tracksuit bottoms. We couldn’t decide on sheets (the other thing we’d been looking for) so have put that off until another time. Left fairly soon after that as we really can’t stand being aimless in shopping malls, and it was really busy and noisy. Give me Princesshay any day, so much nicer for being outside. And having the Apple Store

Home by 4pm so time for some tea, sorting out stuff for tomorrow, and all that general Sunday night stuff. Like blogging, and scrabulous

Losing two teeth in the space of one week is just wrong! The boy appeared at my side this morning having found his other front tooth in his bed, it fell out overnight! So all of a sudden we have a very gappy son

He woke up so pleased with himself about the tooth that he proceeded to get dressed, have breakfast, make his lunch, and do both music practices in double quick time, so he has been duly rewarded with an episode of Power Rangers before school, a very rare treat! (meanwhile his sister is having a tantrum over A minor, but the less said about that the better I think!)

Or - Wonderful Fings are happening in Beflehem - which did make me smile - lots of Y2s have lost their front teeth so there are even more Fs in place of THs than usual!

I love nativity plays, they make me cry without fail, I know I’m soppy but I just can’t help it. It was Josiah’s turn today, and along with his classmates and the other Y2 class, they did a great job

Today ended with Joe somehow getting chewing gum in his hair, while watching the Phantom Menace. Yes, Josiah. If it had been one of the girls with chewing gum at the ends of their hair I would have just cut it out, but no, it was Joe, with the gum in his fringe. I blame Mr Portico for leaving chewing gum in our car!!

After him trying to pull it out/wash it out with water (I did tell him it wouldn’t work but he wouldn’t listen ) we resorted to google and read that peanut butter, or something similarly oily, would work. Well it was worth a try, so we slathered some on, let it soak in, and then it did comb out fairly well. He lost a bit of hair as well, but nowhere near as bad as having to cut it out. He’s in the bath now

Steve got home safely last night from the WRC in Wales, he had a great time as usual I think. I am slightly peeved that he’s now spending hours watching the coverage on BBC4 but there we go! Here are a few gratuitous photos.