This was last night while Anna was at her cello lesson.
Today has been Friday, thank goodness, because I’m very tired. It has rained all day and my washing was still on the line from yesterday. The garden is completely flooded.
I am wondering if it was such a good idea to say Anna can go to youth group every Friday night if it means that we have to go and pick her up at 9.30pm - makes a Friday night glass of wine very late!
Geocaching really is the new Animal Crossing, it’s seeing those little smiley faces appear on the map, I just have to keep collecting them. Obsessively. Gutted that there is one puzzle cache which I can’t solve just sitting there in my list, taunting me 
Don’t worry, Animal Crossing City Folk comes out on Wii in the Autumn so I’ll give up on geocaching then for the winter, maybe 
Took Abbie out with Caitlin & Riona (and Ruth!) last night, to do a multi-cache - one where you only have the co-ordinates for the first stage, then at that stage you find the co-ords for the next one, etc. I’d tried this walk once before and got stuck at the second stage - this time we found that one ok then got stuck at the third! Couldn’t give up at more than half way round but the girls were getting impatient so I texted the cache owner for a clue (cheating I know 
), and it turned out I was in exactly the right place, just feeling for the wrong sort of thing. Found the last part, the big cache, easily after that. And it was a fantastic view across the city once we reached the top of the hill, so well worth doing 
Abbie went home with her friends, and Anna was already at a sleepover, while Steve is out racing, so that left me with just Josiah to go out this morning finding a couple more caches with his little friend. Another nice walk with easy finds, then we went back for lunch. Josiah stayed on to play and is getting dropped home later
This afternoon I picked up both girls from their sleepovers. Anna went to bed almost immediately! Abbie helped me with a few housework jobs, we went to the library and stocked up on books, then she went off for a nap, too! I am enjoying the peace and quiet before Josiah and Steve get home. Gotta love the holidays
Going to make redcurrant souffle for pudding tonight as Riverford sent me redcurrants and I’m not sure what else to do with them! There aren’t enough of them for much else!
It was Josiah’s turn for a trip out yesterday, he came with me to meet a friend in Torbay for some geocaching. Actually it felt as though we spent more time looking for toilets for Joe than for geocaches, but there we go! My best trip to date - found four out of the four caches we looked for, *and* did a bonus virtual cache.
Sunday morning was very slow here - 4/5 of us had been up throughout the night, only Josiah had slept through everything. So we all went back to bed and didn’t really get up until late morning. I faffed around (while still in bed!) putting video together for school … I’ve been taking video clips of a child in their new class so that they can take it home and watch it over the summer holidays, to help with transition.
Eventually Steve, Joe and I gathered for lunch and the Grand Prix; the girls were still in bed! Then Josiah had a birthday party to go to so I dropped him off. We had planned to go out in the afternoon with Ruth, Caitlin and Riona - ummed and aahed for a bit about whether to still go but decided we would, and Anna managed to rouse herself to come with us. Had a nice couple of hours out and blew the cobwebs away doing a couple of geocaches and also finding a trig pillar (one of Ruth’s passions).
) ironing nametapes on to all the new school uniform that we bought the other day.
Now to get up and see who’s going to school today …
Just got embroiled in upgrading to WP2.6, which took far too long and broke too many plugins for my liking. Still, they are all fixed now, but I have a chronic headache, not helped by the events of the night.
We had a pleasant enough evening at Jools Holland - well, Jools was great, and 4/5 of us really enjoyed it. Abbie had decided she felt ill so was hiding under a blanket. We ignored her thinking she was making a mountain out of a molehill but then she spent the night throwing up so perhaps she wasn’t just making a fuss after all 
Anyway here are some photos mainly from before Abbie started feeling dodgy.
Think we are going to be taking it very easy today - she’s still being sick and the rest of us were all awake throughout the night so feeling kind of rough as well 
A weekend of following this cello girl around, as she has another concert tomorrow as well! Today’s was fun; after the usual Children’s Orchestra practice, when we went home, the Youth Orchestra jumped on a coach together and went down to Exmouth for a performance in Manor Gardens, at what is apparently known as their ‘performance stage’, although it looks more like an upmarket bandstand to me!
It was slightly drizzly at first, but having cancelled the concert last week it went ahead today anyway. Abbie, Joe and I had picked up Aunty Esther along the way, taken her home for lunch, and then took her out to Exmouth and subjected her to the concert as well
We armed ourselves with details of a few local geocaches to find; glad we did, as it kept us moving until the sun came out. Did a couple of micros, then the last one was a tiny magnetic nano, very well camouflaged to look like a bolt head, it took me far too long to find it despite the fact that I was looking in exactly the right place! Afterwards, the sun finally appeared, so we bought ice creams and sat in the park for the rest of the concert.
That post title should be read with an air of resignment, as I am fairly sure there will be repeat visits to Wiscombe Park at regular intervals, because Steve had a fantastic weekend there. Yesterday he was out from 7am until 6pm, but came home with a huge (albeit very sunburnt) grin on his face having come second in his class.
Today he left early again, and we followed him at the more reasonable hour of 10am, just towards the end of the first practice run. When we arrived we walked straight down the hill to the lower paddock area. This was the view as we headed down to find Steve.
We hung around the bottom of the hill while Steve did his second practice run, and eyed up the competition - mainly two Cosworths!
Over lunchtime we sat around chatting with people, which was pleasant - the social side of the event was nice. Meanwhile the children climbed a tree and worked on their understanding of levers by mucking around with a makeshift see-saw.
After that we headed further up the track to watch the timed runs. Anna took some video snippets as well - I particularly like the part where she almost misses Steve completely
After the first timed run it started raining, so no-one was realistically going to better their time on the second run, but some of them went again anyway. We went home after we’d seen Steve do his wet run, because by then the kids were well and truly bored and we were all wet and cold. Still, I got to use my very appropriate ‘Stig’ umbrella
