just another morning here

The first weekend of the school holidays is almost over, only five more to go! We’ve been busy as usual though with different things going on …

On Friday night we went to Exmouth, along with some other families, for an end of term BBQ. Well, we didn’t BBQ as that would have meant being organised; we had chips on the seafront instead. Everyone else was far more civilised than us, of course. Miss White even joined us for some of the time, which was lovely- possibly the last time we see her! The kids had a ball, and it was very chilled for us grownups as well

Yesterday Steve took all his employees on a jolly down to Haynes Race Track, so muggins here covered at the garage. It was very quiet although I did see one genuine customer – but a quiet day suited me as I had some time to think about planning for next year – not that I actually managed to get any work done, but still. The children spent a pleasant day with Grandma We were meant to go to Exmouth again with different friends but I made an executive decision that I was too tired so called an early night all round.

Today the girls went off to panto for the day, while Steve, Josiah and I went into town, then out to Wiscombe as spectators for a couple of hours – a novelty for Steve! Since he blew his gearbox up yesterday he had little choice

Anyway, back to the girls – over the past few weeks they’ve been involved with a mini-production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by the ‘Juniors’ of the Pinhoe Panto Society. Well, we thought it was a mini-production but actually it was pretty major! Considering how little time they’d had to rehearse it was an amazing show, with all the kids involved, some great singing and dancing too – and they all had such fun doing it, which was obvious in their enjoyment of the performance.

Afterwards all the panto families went and sat in the park and chatted while the kids played, lovely

Most things have been fairly annoying today, so there is a fair bit of glossing over to be done.

The highlights were going down to Isca for the end of the Exe Valley Challenge which Abbie took part in today – lovely atmosphere and Abbie enjoyed the walk itself (though I hear she broke the rules by going to the toilet in a shop ). I may hear more about it from her tomorrow when she’s not so tired.

Then came evensong and two concerts in different places, which made for a tricky afternoon for me – I went to evensong, then eventually extricated boys from the cathedral; heard a little bit of the violin one and the second half of the other one – but then afterwards we went back to Mr Featherstone’s house for a BBQ with some families from the Suzuki Violin group and that was lovely The kids played badminton and hung out together while the parents chatted – very chilled.

After school today, I went to meet up with Abbie, her friend Georgina and Georgina’s mum too, at a nearby farm. The Y6s have been given a project to do on food and farming; they have to pick a local farm and study it. The girls chose Taverner’s Farm, an organic dairy farm which makes ice cream

It is also known as the Orange Elephant, because of the type of dairy cows that they keep but also because they keep a big orange elephant in a field that you can see from the A38 dual carriageway! Anyway. Georgina’s mum had fixed up an official visit, so after an ice-cream in the cafe (because it would have been rude not to!) the very friendly farmer showed the girls around, let us take all sorts of photos, talked them through the dairy farming and ice cream making processes. It was fab

Now, of course, they have some work to do writing it all up …

Abbie reached the end of her ’100 days’ of music practice recently, and asked for a wetsuit as her reward. She’s wanted a wetsuit for as long as I can remember, so I couldn’t say no. Of course having a new wetsuit means you will, naturally, want to go and use it! So this afternoon while Steve was at work I took the kids down to Decoy Park for a kayaking session. It was hot enough to not really need a wetsuit, but no matter!

The kids had fun on the lake for an hour, while I chatted to other random parents (as you do!) and took photos. Afterwards they asked for an ice-cream, predictably. Also predictably, there were a couple of nearby geocaches so I decided that they could have an ice-cream if I could get the caches