just another morning here

So tired!!

It’s been a whirlwind few days saying goodbye to colleagues and children at school, as well as a morning at my new school, and an Anglo-Saxon banquet … all at the same time as trying to mastermind project ‘Get the House Ready for the Russians’ while working.

I have been well and truly spoiled, my TAs made me a photo montage of my class students and staff in a gorgeous frame, and gave me a silver sparkly bracelet. AND we had a lovely night out together Then today I had a few little gifts from the children in the class as well as flowers from other people too – my house looks great tonight!

We were lucky enough to be able to organise a bus day today, so we had a day out with the whole class (plus one extra!) at Decoy Park – they enjoyed the play area, we had a picnic, and walked around the lake, then played some more – and the sun shone, and I took lovely photos

I am really sad to leave everyone (it was so weird and sad today – I hate goodbyes) but yet looking forward to the next chapter in my surprise teaching career – in my next school I am going to teach the Early Years class which is a big change from KS4.

And now, we are into the Russian Exchange, our Russian guests arrived this evening, thankfully an hour later than expected as I would never have been ready in time! Regular readers may remember our trip to Yaroslavl in 2010; this is the return visit. We (ECO families) are hosting a ballet troupe and an accordion ensemble as well as leaders etc., so we have a week of entertainment and cultural activities laid on for them. I don’t have to be involved in all of it, just a few of the days, but we do have two lovely teenage girls staying with us. Anna, Abbie and Josiah worked hard during the first two days of their holidays to get the place ship-shape and beds ready etc. It’s going to be fun if we can all just catch up on a bit of sleep first …

Having really enjoyed the week at Calvert last year, I was really pleased to be going again this year – with some students who had been before, and others for whom it was a new experience. I’m pleased to report that it was brilliant again

I confess, I was mostly looking forward to the food and the company, but I enjoyed the activities too (the food was the best though!). We had a camera in each group this year so I wasn’t the official photographer, but joined in with all the activities, so that was a lot of fun.

In a shock spontaneous moment I decided to ride a horse – I have been slightly scared of horses since I was a child but decided the time had come to get over it! It was quite fun, I can definitely see the attraction, but I think I’ll stick to geocaching – much cheaper. Speaking of which, I found one of the caches around Wistpoundland reservoir this year while walking around with the students – excellent

Generally it’s just a lovely week to spend with some of my favourite people – staff and students alike – they are a fantastic bunch. Brilliant to see the children having opportunities they don’t normally get, achieving so much, and enjoying themselves with the freedom that comes from being away from the confines of school. We were lucky with the weather again this year which was great. There were a few people who couldn’t go which was a shame, and they were very much missed.

My family, meanwhile, didn’t miss me at all, I don’t think … so after a day of music related activities on Saturday followed by a school quiz night in the evening, I went back to work for a day on Sunday to write reports. It had better be nice weather in the Easter holidays, that’s all I can say!

Every term, the choristers get a ‘free weekend’, where the girls cover the boys’ duties and vice versa. This weekend is the boys’ free weekend, but I have discovered that the notion of a free weekend is as much a misnomer as that of a sleepover …

Today we were as busy as usual – I tried not to go to orchestra but failed since the person on duty had car troubles so I had to go anyway – and the children were all there as usual too. Josiah usually fits a choir rehearsal in as well as orchestra but just had the one thing to do this morning.

We did actually have time to come home for lunch; sometimes we don’t do that as we don’t have time, but today we did. Then dashed back out for an afternoon of music – Suzuki Group lesson, Hannah’s pupil concert (was meant to involve both girls but Abbie chickened out of her piano piece!), and rehearsals for the DPAF next week. Here is a condensed version for the grandparents’ benefit

We did have to laugh at Anna, who had the same mishap with her cello spike that had happened two years ago - hopefully she’ll learn that lesson thoroughly before she’s on some famous stage somewhere

This evening we went out to Great Aunty Jacky’s birthday party – the children plus Abbie’s friend Riona who’d joined us for the night, dressed up in Lord of the Rings theme as requested; Steve and I were very bah humbug about costumes (can you believe it?!) and just went as ourselves.

Tomorrow I’m out all day helping with a school dance show. At some point over the weekend we are also cleaning out the fish and guinea pigs as usual, folding/ironing about six loads of laundry, cleaning the bathroom and hoovering round, etc. etc., it never ends. So, er – free weekend, anyone?!!

Quite some time ago, I said to Anna that the birthday present I would love the most would be a CD that she could make/record for me. I even picked one of my favourite songs and got her the music for it. She and Steve began working on it, but it was a fairly disastrous process for many reasons – they kept falling out with one another, and there was never enough time when they were both home to work on it anyway. Getting tired of the back room being set up like a recording studio, I decided that it really wasn’t worth it and called the whole thing off.

Anyway, Anna managed to find something that means far more to me than a CD – she decided to get baptised. Actually she’d wanted to get baptised for quite some time but I think I put her off when she was really little, wanting her to be a bit older and wiser … and she put herself off at some point too, I think! Her trip to Romania over the summer was formative in the decision making process coming round again, and she has decided for sure this time. By chance it was planned to happen on a weekend close to my birthday, so we had a lovely family celebration day with my parents and Steve’s parents.

Baptisms are one of those things that invariably make me cry (along with nativity plays and the opening music to Fly Away Home), and over the past few weeks I haven’t even been able to think about Anna’s baptism without getting emotional, so I’m writing here what I couldn’t quite say today, for fear of embarrassing her (and myself!).

I can’t actually think of many things that I would value more, or be more proud of, than one of my children choosing to make a commitment of their own to the faith that means so much to me. I often worry that we’re doing a rubbish job with parenting, muddling through and making the best decisions we can, but not necessarily being sure about very much. But this has reassured me that despite my failures as a parent, God has a plan for my children, He wants to know them individually and personally, and that is something I am incredibly grateful for. The emotional occasion was probably made all the more moving for me by the fact that she asked my Dad to baptise her, along with Andy our own church leader, and that was very special.

Possibly the best birthday present ever (maybe even outdoing some of Steve’s gifts over the years ), and definitely a good reason for another ‘ditch the diet’ day. I have mentioned Esther’s and Ben’s baptisms on this blog in years gone by. Very pleased to add another. Lots of Anna’s friends came to church/the pool to support her, too, which was lovely.

We followed the baptism with lunch at ASK; we picked it because it’s cunningly situated on the Cathedral Green so that Josiah could down his dinner and then run back across in time for Evensong. We went to the service as well, after a slightly more leisurely dessert. After that followed some furniture removal (come on, what celebratory day is complete without it?!) then a cup of tea and some cake