just another morning here

Thankfully schools here had all finished on Friday, so this weekend we only (ha!) had all the Christmas performances by the extra groups. It’s always a manic weekend but lots of fun.

All credit to Josiah, who had the busiest day of all of us. He was out of the house around 8.40am for a choir rehearsal 9-10.30. He then had a service to sing from 11am-12.15pm. Then came a brief break while we collected the girls from Orchestra, dropped Abbie to a friend’s, and made it into town with half an hour to grab MacDonalds before he played violin with the Suzuki Group for the best part of three hours. I walked him back to the Cathedral at 4.45pm where he had a rehearsal from 5-6pm before tea in the boarding house and then the Cathedral Choir’s Christmas concert from 7.30-9.30pm. The choristers were given £5 each for having sung the extra service in the morning so he dashed off to buy sweets in each break from the violin playing and enjoyed sharing them during the busking. We’ve been doing this busking each Christmas for five years now, and it’s quite interesting to see how much Josiah has grown up since we started! And Anna too … we had to drag her away from her friends at the end, as they’d started improvising around various pop songs and would happily have carried on for hours I think, but the Harlequins Centre had had enough of them by then

The first pic is from 2007 and the second one from this year. I did have photos of 2008, 2009, and 2010 too, but thought you’d probably get bored by all of those

The Choir’s concert was excellent too, we really enjoyed it. Josiah is definitely more confident now and it’s lovely to watch. He’s signed up for an extra choir jaunt to support a choir in North Devon this week, so that shows how much he enjoys the choir aspect of his life – it’s VERY hard work but it is fun too.

Yesterday we had the ECO Christmas concert – very enjoyable as usual and we particularly enjoyed having the Ockment Valley Handbells performing both separately and with the orchestra – I wish I had video-ed some of it but I only have photos I’m afraid. Again fun to see the pictures from Christmas concerts in years gone by and compare them to this year’s!

Again the first pic is Anna’s first year at ECO in 2007, and the cello section this year, with Anna as the new section principal. 2008 was Abbie’s year since the concert was actually on her birthday, 2009 is best forgotten because of the junk band we shared with (ow), and 2010 is memorable for having NO photos probably because I was more worried about getting there safely in the snow than remembering the camera!

We now have a week off school, where I’m trying to be as productive as possible so that we can have a proper break from Christmas Eve onwards. Time to stop blogging, have lunch, and get on with some school-work …

Today some of the Cathedral Choir were shipped out to Darts Farm for some busking. They sang well even if they were a bit squashed! Hope they will do it again next year, it was a good place to go

It’s not every day that someone brings you a gift when you sell them a car

Over the summer, however, we sold a car to Josiah’s violin teacher, Mr Featherstone – who we have known and loved for 6 years now. On the day that he collected the car, he handed Steve a piece of music that he’d written for the children to play – it was an exercise that he’d given Joe beforehand to practise having a straight bow, but he’d extended it and written a piano and flute part for the girls to join in with. What a lovely man!

I absolutely love hearing them play together, although getting them to practise together and let me record it is like getting blood out of a stone – but the less said about that, the better

Thanks to Emma, who came and stayed over with Abbie and Joe, Steve and I were able to get to Dorset Youth Orchestra’s formal concert last night in Bournemouth. We weren’t going to bother going, we were simply going to attend the informal concert today, but we figured that since Anna had had a bit of a funny start to the week, we’d make the effort. I think she appreciated it – she spent all of the interval sitting on Steve’s lap (don’t tell her I said that ) Funny though, we are so used to her playing the cello that Steve went and chose seats with a great view of the cello section, sat down, then remembered that she was on bassoon. Couldn’t see her at all! But I don’t think we’d have been able to wherever we had positioned ourselves. Ho hum.

Anyway, it was a good concert, then we stayed in a cheap but perfectly nice hotel for the night, ate sandwiches and drank wine bought from the shop on the corner, oh yes, we know how to live it up! We had had lunch out in Exmouth with my parents during the day beforehand though so weren’t hungry enough to eat out again!

Today we were meant to be going to see the car in the recovery depot, but we missed it by 10 minutes. Steve was very disappointed (I wasn’t!). Picked up all our CDs which they’d extracted, bar the one which was in the CD player – Spilt Milk by Jellyfish, luckily looks like it won’t be too expensive to replace!

After that we had some time to spare before going back to Bryanston, so we found a little geocache circle to follow. It was a brilliant set of caches; each container individually made into a different animal/bug, and one of them was really tricky to find – really enjoyed them, they’ll get some favourite points from me. My favourite was the one in the first photo, which was made from a tape measure. Very creative. And then we had lunch

The informal concert was due to be held at Bryanston’s ‘Greek Theatre’, but it was raining, so they moved back into the lobby area of the main school. Some parents sat around in the corridors while others went upstairs and hung over the gallery to watch. I just kept gazing around at the building, I must admit – it is such an awesome place! I wonder in how many schools can you fit an orchestra into the hallway?!! Music was good too, all different sorts today, some solos and small ensembles; Anna played with the Wind Orchestra as well as doing a Samba piece that they’d obviously done as a fun workshop to end the week with. Oh yes, and she did it all in her pyjamas They are musical ones I suppose, but honestly!

Everyone else had had photographs taken in formal concert clothes on Monday morning; Anna was standing on a grass verge taking photos of our wrecked car in hers – the police did wonder what she was doing in a long black dress at 9am on a Monday morning! So, since we didn’t have a posh photo we persuaded her to get her friends together for a photo instead

Anna managed to make a good impression on the Dorset Music Service people despite the dodgy start to the week (which was my fault not hers, of course!), so hopefully she’ll get invited back again another time, she had a whale of a time after that first wobbly evening which was totally understandable after the accident.

We asked her how she felt about cello vs bassoon having just done a week there with on the bassoon and she really struggles to decide … best news of all on the way home though – the bassoon that was in the accident will be mended by tomorrow – for less than the excess on our insurance. Really impressed with Griff who took the job on and sorted it so quickly. Other good news during the week were Anna’s music exam results – two distinctions and a merit – excellent!

Abbie and Joe have done an excellent job of being home alone all day, with the occasional phonecall of support. I’d totally forgotten to book Abbie in for a week at Haven Banks that I’d said she could do (bad mummy), but luckily she phoned up today and there are still places and we can hand forms and payment in on Monday morning! Suzie has kept them busy – she’s currently asleep in a drawer, which is very cute