just another morning here

Plus a fish, an audition, and some nice meals out with friends, but they didn’t begin with C so couldn’t fit them into the title!

So, this weekend Steve upped and left us all at 5am on Saturday; he has spent the weekend on one of his hill climb jaunts - but some of the rest of us had things on and couldn’t be bothered to be to-ing and fro-ing from Cornwall so we didn’t go. He’s still not home as I write this, I imagine he will be exhausted, having towed his Subaru and slept in the back of the Audi, never mind the motor racing itself, so I may have to update this later if there are any photos or anything worthy of mention!

Saturday was really chilled and lovely here. Anna has been working on a project all weekend - one she was given at half term I think, but it’s due in on Monday and she’d hardly done any of it before now! So that’s been bubbling away in the background all weekend; Abbie and I have helped her with a few little bits of it, too.

We went to Tesco and Pets at Home first thing to pick up a few necessary bits - ended up with some unnecessary ones as well when Josiah decided to spend his birthday money on a new fish tank and another fish to keep Digger company. Came home and started re-arranging the kitchen to accommodate said fish tank, although I might yet move it, as I’m not sure the fish will like being on top of the sideboard directly above the washing machine. On top of the fridge is probably better, but we’ll see. I’ve done all the washing this weekend already in any case!

Josiah was picked up by some friends for a playdate at their house, and we arranged to meet up later on for a walk and geocache hunt … always like to introduce more of my friends to caching as Steve and I don’t ever seem to have the time (or the inclination when we have the time!). Thought it was a bit trickier than the description suggested, especially as the GPS pointed us to the wrong side of the river to start with! Found it eventually though - an empty box! Perfectly big enough for some swaps but there was nothing there, so we put a few little bits and bobs into it for the next visitors to find

Came home from there and after another hour’s project work for Anna, we headed down to Rog & Ruth’s for a BBQ with them and some other friends, so that was really nice. Staggered home and caught up with Saturday night tv

On Sunday we started early with the China project again. It annoyed me in the end, as there was so much that they were supposed to include that it was a sketchy overview, rather than a detailed study of any particular bit - I would have preferred her to be able to choose a particular focus rather than try to cover everything. Ho hum. I helped a fair bit to get it finished so that we still had a little bit of weekend left!

We didn’t make it to church because we were taking Anna down to some auditions, for the Northcott Theatre pantomime children’s chorus. Not sure what the standard is or whether she stands a chance of getting in, I guess time will tell! They have said they will let us know this week. While she was there we walked along the river for a geocache

Some friends invited us for lunch which was fab, we enjoyed our time with them, and the delicious roast dinner Steve is probably going to come home starving but I’m not cooking anything later!

We came home and have tidied up, put washing away, sorted out, and are now lazing around watching tv and waiting for Steve to get back.

It was Steve’s turn to work a couple of Bank Holidays so he’s been mainly at work this weekend, leaving the rest of us to enjoy ourselves, and we have

Yesterday we spent the day in town. Firstly we tried to take back a cello string that had snapped after a week. I was incredulous that the one music shop in town was closed, I mean, I know it’s a bank holiday but if it were my shop, I’d have kept it open. Anyway.

We wandered down through town, doing a bit of shopping in various places, and ended up at the Cathedral Green in time for a re-enactment of the Crucifixion. We hadn’t quite been spiritual enough to follow the whole Easter story as it had been acted out in various locations in town but it was good to be part of the finale. It was absolutely freezing; Anna commented that the guys up on the crosses next to Jesus really didn’t have to act much to look like they were in pain, and she was right!

After that we ended up in McDs for lunch , we met some friends there so that made it bearable. A bit more shopping afterwards and then I took the kids down to MakeArt and treated them to a session there - definitely lovely but definitely a bit on the pricey side too. They had a great time though, decorating some small animals with decoupage - and I had a nice cup of tea while they were doing it.

From there we went down to Ivonne’s birthday party where we had some delicious cake and a Wii bowling game to celebrate. The kids were starting to get a bit hyper and annoying by this point, Steve was selling cars so he was late arriving and we left pretty much as soon as he got there!

Invited more friends over for a roast dinner and a showing of La Vie en Rose in the evening, and that was great - the food and the film, not to mention the company

Today has been fairly boring really; we went into town and got a new cello string, popped in to Sainsbury’s, did some music practices, some jobs around the house, Anna went to play with a friend who lives a half hour drive away so that took an hour out of the morning, the other two made a nice looking Easter cake, and they all did some Easter crafty stuff.

Joe had a friend to play in the afternoon, supposedly to practice a short drama they are doing at church tomorrow, but also just to play. Billy came bearing tadpoles for us which was very exciting (for me!). Sorted out guinea pigs both here and at friends’ while they’re away, dropped Billy off, picked Steve up, came home and cooked some dinner. Anna was dropped home and they all got into pyjamas to snuggle in front of Saturday night tv, which is nice, even if we have ended up in front of 2 different programmes!

I came home from work today (still enjoying it lots) to find the younger two children making a crown for our guinea pig, Caspian. They saw the trailer for the new Narnia film yesterday, which has rekindled their interest in the story. Reepicheep is probably lucky that he doesn’t have much of a tail

Meanwhile Anna had a friend home from school and they spent almost their entire time up in the music room working on something (her friend brought a guitar over). They made a bit of time for some Wii Mario & Sonic Olympics as well though Joe and I finished off his violin practice then went to Sainsbury’s.

We spent some of yesterday down on the beach, it was a beautiful day, and this time Exmouth won the vote (it was there or Dartmoor!).

So … since the last blog … we had a weekend, which seemed to disappear all too quickly.

Monday was interesting. I spent the day in the court and actually got as far as being on a jury, but not much further. We’d been sworn in on the jury and heard the charge, when one of the other jurors said something to the usher. It became apparent that he knew something of the case so he was off the jury and they replaced him. All seemed fine and proceedings went on for an hour before lunch, we started hearing the case etc.

Went for lunch then there was a long wait afterwards. Eventually we were traipsed back into the courtroom to be told by the judge that we couldn’t be the jury on the case because of what the original juror had said.

Back in the jury retiring room it transpired that one person *had* heard what he’d said, which was something like ‘I know all about this case, he’s guilty’.

So they were right to throw the jury out, but I couldn’t help thinking it was a bit of a silly thing to say in a courtroom, and I was slightly disappointed that we didn’t get to see the process through until the end. I didn’t have to go in today at all but will be back in tomorrow, can’t imagine anything interesting will happen with only 3 days of my two week stint left though.

Meanwhile Steve and Josiah went to pick up our folding camper. After our last camping trip we decided to make some changes, and this is what we’ve ended up with. We can *just* get it up the drive and in the garage, and managed to put it up in the driveway (photo to follow in the morning) to sort a few things out before we take it for a trial run to MuddlePuddle Camp at the weekend. Of course we couldn’t test putting up the worst bit, the awning, which I am dreading, it really does bring back so many memories of my childhood caravan holidays with my parents where putting up the awning was always really stressful for some reason!

Today has been fairly boring, Joe and I have just caught up on jobs - weeding in the garden, shopping, washing, ironing, that sort of thing. Oh, and we went to buy a groundsheet and some towing mirrors, too. The most annoying thing about this whole camper malarkey is that I am going to have to go back to driving school - because I took my test after January 1997 I don’t have the towing class on my driving licence. So I am going to have to take extra lessons and an extra test to get whatever class it is on my licence. Probably just as well as I think I’ll be pretty rubbish at towing, but annoying that I have to pay for it!

As well as all that, we were trying to take care of Gizmo the hamster over the weekend but we failed He’d been having treatment for mites, and basically didn’t really recover since the last injection. Tried drip feeding him fluids from a pipette but it didn’t work and he ended up being put down at the vets on Monday night. Anna was quite upset, but there we go.

Other than that life goes on as usual. Glad to have Russ back at work. The ibook screen is just about working, can’t decide whether to put it in to try and be mended or just persevere with strange angles when necessary.

And parcels arriving on the right day! Steve and I were worried that our present for Joe wasn’t going to get here but then it did

He’s had a lovely day, lots of presents this morning so a big thank you to everyone who got them to us in various ways (more photos on flickr). Have made time for lots of lego play between activities today

We went to Crealy and he spent a happy few hours racing around with another little home ed friend, then I treated him to lunch.

When we got home his parcel was here and he was really happy with a grown up scooter of his own, and went down the road on it to meet the girls from school.

We’re off out now to swimming and then taking Gizmo to the vet, so he’s having to come to the pool with us as well - should provide some extra changing room amusement! Steve’s dashing home to get Anna to ballet on time, and eventually we’ll all end up at home together later on.

Well, the guinea pigs are sorted. I spent some of Monday morning considering how to build a new hutch and run, then deciding that it was probably better to buy one, as I’m fairly rubbish at making stuff - it would probably have ended up looking (and being) awful, not to mention that I’d be likely to spend practically as much on materials as on a ready made one anyway!

So instead I drove round about 5 local pet shops looking for something suitable and eventually found an ex-display double hutch in one of them, so that was a result, as it wasn’t too expensive. Also picked up a nice big run (like this but mine was cheaper!) which reminds me of a babydan playpen, it’s octagonal but like the playpens you can use the sides in any combination you like. I’ve split it down the middle with some other mesh panels, so they now have a huge amount of space each, but can still see each other.

Yesterday they both seemed really happy and were jumping around all over the place - mind you if Caspian gets too close to Reepicheep’s side, Reep does start rumbling at him immediately. I wonder if he’ll grow out of it … just couldn’t bear to see any more injuries on the way. Caspian’s back is healing nicely but it’s a scar at least a centimetre long (which is quite a lot on a small guinea pig really!), and until Reep has settled down it’s not worth them being together.

Our other pet trauma was with Gizmo the hamster, who seemed to have nasty crusty spots growing on all his soft tissues (ears, nose, bottom of feet, genitals - ew!), so we took him to the vet on Monday. Anna was really worried that he’d have to be put down so spent much of Monday morning faffing around taking photos of him just in case. Found out that he has hamster mites which is treatable, he had one injection then and there’s another in a week or so. Had to scrub his entire cage etc. really carefully too. Gizmo has now become our most expensive hamster ever

Haven’t managed to achieve much else other than that! The girls have been back at school after half term, so Joe’s been missing them … he would swear blind that he doesn’t miss them but his behaviour tells me that he does They’re both happy to be back, really enjoying their schooldays. Sometimes it really makes us wonder whether Josiah would be better off back at school as well, but there we are, an ongoing debate in this household!

We’ve had Robyn with us over the past couple of days, so had a trip to Crealy yesterday, did the Sainsbury’s shopping, and that’s about it. Music stuff ongoing as usual, and Joe spent a while yesterday doing mazes/puzzles and music theory workbooks, but that’s about as educational as we’ve got I have spent too much time nit-combing this week already (and have lost my best nit-comb, aargh). Last night was Miscarriage Support Group and then we watched a film when I got home. For the second time in a row I managed to stay awake all the way through!

Steve’s working on a little project of his own, mission Garage Clearout. Joe’s been helping him a bit, too. It’s going relatively well at the moment, especially since he lined up our old fireplace surround and other stuff in the drive ready to take to the tip, and our neighbour looked over the fence and said ‘I’ll have that!’. She took the fire too, and some decorative patio slabs that we’d taken up - ie most of the heavy annoying stuff! Always happier to see things go to a good home than to the tip, so that’s good. I had tried to freecycle it all last year with no luck!