just another morning here

Started with a pretty lazy weekend; on Saturday I did loads of laundry, Joe went to a party, and the rest of us ended up at the museum for an Animated Exeter workshop. Cunningly arranged to meet some friends there, so the girls went to the workshop while we sneaked off and had a drink in the cafe – there are definite advantages to having bigger children!

On Sunday we went into town again for the Games afternoon at the Phoenix. Along with a friend, we did the competition there which was to try and name the games/consoles from 20 screenshots taken from computer games since the 70s … don’t know how well we did on that, we still had gaps at the end … I obviously don’t have *that* much of a mis-spent youth as I could hardly name any of them.

Predictably, they had big screen Wii, which was sort of fun to watch. I have challenged Steve to make a wireless remote sensor bar for ours, so that we could play it on the projector here as well! Steve got to play Wii Tennis against another pro and completely thrashed him – shame they hadn’t organised a knockout tournament! If there is anyone out there who wants to take Steve on, you’re welcome – he is lamenting the fact that none of us can give him a proper game!

We all took a bit of time to look at the Peter & the Wolf exhibition – must see that animation, it looks good. Oh, and Anna & Joe got an autographed photo of Greedo, from actor Paul Blake at the Comic Expo. We are still slightly mystified that someone who, over 30 years ago, played a character who made him (the actor) unrecognisable, can be around signing autographs and selling photographs – but that’s Star Wars for you I suppose!

Our friend came back for the afternoon, we watched X Men III, then had dinner, and later on Steve and I dragged ourselves out for a pub quiz night with more friends which was great fun – although I am looking forward to the day when pubs aren’t smoky.

Monday was a washout; Anna had a friend around, we went to the supermarket, but that really was about it. Actually I think it had been raining solidly for three days, I’m pretty pleased to have had a dry day today, not that anyone’s been out much!

This morning we had pancakes for brunch, then have had the pleasure of Caitlin & Riona’s company for most of the day, which has generally been lovely and had the added advantage of getting homework done!

Did a bit of jewelry making until we ran out of elastic; Abbie finished off a bracelet from a set she started a couple of weeks ago now – it looks really good on.

That’s me up to date, I think. For the first time in almost a week I feel human again, so that’s reassuring! We have friends coming for dinner which I’m looking forward to, both friends we’ve known for ages separately, whose names are now happily rolling off my tongue together We’re planning to play a couple of board games together which should make for a nice evening.

Feeling the need to gloss over a few days here because they’ve been fairly rubbish, mainly because I’ve been ill. We’ve managed the usual maths, reading, and music stuff … been to the library, and had a trip to Crealy … all on autopilot really. Today I finally took myself to the doctor so things should improve but it’s taking a while. Thankfully Steve had the day off so he was around to lend a hand today.

We started today with an assembly at the girls’ school, because Abbie was receiving yet another Thank You Certificate. We and she were fairly proud of her for this one because she was apparently the first person in all of Key Stage 2 to achieve a certain level of reward for hard work/good behaviour.

After that we took Josiah and Robyn out to this exhibition, which was lovely. (as an aside, can’t believe it’s been three years since the last time we went there!) We had the gallery to ourselves, which was great. Joe sat for ages doing the children’s activity pages and drawing a picture of Parsley the Lion (from the Herbs) for a competition, while Robyn pottered between the rooms and did some drawing of her own as well.

The Wombles were the highlight for me – not sure that I really used to watch any of the others (Huxley Pig, the Herbs, and something else I can’t even remember now! Oh and Paddington, which I did watch but I preferred the books!) Not really supposed to take photos in the gallery but I don’t think you can see any of the actual exhibits in this one

Came home and I faded fast, had lunch and got Joe through maths and music in record time so that I could veg out for the rest of the day. Girls have arrived home from school so now it’s officially half term which feels very nice indeed

The girls have spent the day at Animation Allsorts, another Animated Exeter activity. They went with Caitlin and Riona, and seem to have enjoyed the first day immensely – as I picked them up I was shown an array of plasticine models plus backdrops to animate them against; they think that as well as finishing the animation they will get to add sounds tomorrow.

After dropping them there, Joe and I spent an hour at the Museum, playing with the stuff in one of their boxes. Josiah didn’t want to bother looking around at all but he’s been begging me to do a box every time we’ve been in the museum recently, so it was nice to indulge him (the rest of us have got a bit bored of them!) and he really enjoyed himself.

Then we pootled around doing various bits – had our photo taken for some newspaper editorial about the new garage, stopped and bought more hamster supplies, then eventually came home for lunch. Faffed around here for a bit packing stuff into boxes so that we can move stuff around more easily between our downstairs rooms. Josiah played with Mollie, Steve popped home to measure various things, and then it was time to go and pick the girls up again!

If anyone’s interested, this is the new sofa which we are waiting for with bated breath I’m still glad we got rid of the old ones early though, as it’s given us plenty of space to work in. Tonight’s job is to move everything around between the two living areas and work out what we want in each room, then Steve has the fun job of rewiring it all accordingly. I think it will work well, essentially the front room will become more of a film/music room and the back room will be more of a tv/games room. Front room his domain, back room mine … or so we’d both like to think

This time last year it was a Donkey Konga bongo tournament, this year the Games Day was a little less exciting as they played a Buzz tournament – which, obviously, anyone who knows me will realise I would be fairly rubbish at (so, also obviously, I didn’t have a go )! The girls both had a turn and Anna won her set, but her score wasn’t a patch on the highest score of the afternoon so no prizes this year.

Still, we had a good time, and met up with a friend there who then came back for dinner and a film, so that was nice.

Steve has decided today that our front room needs re-decorating/changing around, so he spent some time taking the fire surround/mantelpiece off the wall. I never really liked it at all so I don’t really mind, but now we are going to have to do something about it, it’s going to be a case of ‘started so we’ll have to finish’ (although I will keep reminding him that *he* started it!), so that’s going to be an ongoing project for the spring …

Joe’s been ill so he went to bed early, but the girls enjoyed staying up later this evening because it’s half term; tomorrow we’re planning to go swimming with Aunty Emma and Robyn (Em, if you read this, I’ll phone them up in the morning and check times – going by the timetable it looks like 3pm will be the time to go but I guess it may have changed due to half term? Will ring you as soon as I know!)