just another morning here

This second week of holidays was meant to be a family week together but inevitably errands, work, and other things took over as they always do – so we chose to just have Friday as a day out instead. The children wanted to go to Brean and so we agreed, despite my reservations … and actually had a lovely day out together.

They loved all the fairground rides, and as well as that we all had a very pleasant walk along the beach, nice lunch in a quiet pub, spent some time in the arcades wasting 2ps (but we did win rather a lot of keyrings!), then a few more rides before coming home again. The weather was lovely until the end of the day – it started raining as we drove away.

All in all it was a lovely day together. Steve wasn’t on the phone all day, just enough for me to add a couple of photos to my collection of pics of him on the phone Should have taken a photo of us with our stash in the arcade as well – we had loads of fun there, and exchanged our tickets for sweets that we then all munched our way through. Reminded me of the grabbers in Looe

Or: I found some photos on the camera so thought I’d better add a blog post about them!

Last week Abbie went on a kayaking course down at Haven Banks, along with her friend Riona. They really enjoyed themselves, and finished up by achieving the vast majority of level 5 of the Paddle Power Passport. I imagine they may well go on and do the higher levels another year.

Joe and I went down for a walk along the river on their last day and watched them paddling back then finishing off a few bits of their award.

I didn’t take any photos of our day at Transform last week but that was lovely too … no decent photos of the cat this week either so the weekly update is a rubbish iPhone photo but it is quite funny. She is currently trying to sabotage my efforts at working, too!

On Thursday night we went to the Open Rehearsal of EMG Symphony Orchestra – they do this fabulous thing where they open up their rehearsal for anyone to go and watch. Last time I took children from my school – but this time we went as a family. It’s called ‘Call for the Superheroes’ as they were playing lots of film music etc. so sounded like fun. We’re trying to build some links between their orchestra and the Children’s Orchestra, so this time round anyone over Grade 6 level at ECO was invited to go and play along.

Anna and one other ECO member joined in – Anna loved having the opportunity to play some more challenging music. In fact I did have to laugh at one point as she was grinning at us and sliding her hand up and down the cello – clearly not actually playing the notes!! Anyway it’s given her a taste of the big wide world which I suppose she hasn’t really had before; she is still only really involved in school things rather than anything bigger. It sounded great, too – they played Holst’s Mars, and themes from Gladiator and Pirates of the Caribbean – if Josiah didn’t have a concert on the same night I would be very tempted to go to the concert as well!

On Friday night we had a lovely meal down at the Chinese. I’d lost track of time and not managed to cook tea in time, plus it was the start of half term, plus we hadn’t really done anything for Steve’s birthday, so all of that meant we felt justified enough!

We’ve had a fairly quiet weekend. Steve was working on Saturday and after doing a bit of work at home, the rest of us went to join in with Robyn’s 6th birthday party, which was pleasant – a bouncy castle and a few small girls, an Easter egg hunt and hide & seek in the garden.

Today – more work this morning, Riona came over to spend the day with Abbie, we had a rather delicious spaghetti bolognaise for lunch, then drove down to somewhere near Ivybridge to visit our friends Nic & Ady who are staying there at the moment. They’re WWOOFing their way around the country this year, in a camper van called Willow. I’m incredibly envious, I must admit, as the idea of leaving the ratrace does seem very appealing at times. Josiah was shown around the farm by D & S, and we sat around drinking tea and chatting, on a beautiful sunny afternoon, looking out at a fabulous view across the moors. Simply idyllic. Fitted in a quick cache on the way home

We were due to set up for this year’s church holiday club this evening but the caretaker didn’t turn up, so it’s going to be a very efficient job done in very little time in the morning.