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!

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.

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

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

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!)

After Stage by Stage for Anna and violin lesson for Josiah (which was absolutely fantastic today, woohoo) we picked Abbie up from the garage, then headed back up into town to the Museum to see some of the Animated Exeter things that were on there – Animation Stations, and Illustration to Animation.

The Illustration to Animation display was good, but the workshop was just excellent, as these things at the museum usually are! We arrived and were sent off with clipboards and pencils to look around the Sea Monsters exhibition and the children were asked to sketch their favourite monster, which they all enjoyed doing.

Then back down to the workshop space where there were a whole host of materials available for recreating your own sea monster – flick books and 2D paper model making, then 3D stuff as well – my lot all went for the ‘decorate a vegetable’ approach. These have had to be specially reconstructed for photos, they didn’t quite make it home from town in one piece

Joe’s spiky turtle

Abbie’s long-nosed whale

Anna’s spiky sparkly sea slug

They were then able to take their models and use stop motion photography and an ibook (need a mac on these occasions, of course ) to animate them against a rather funky 3D seascape background. Lots of people were there taking photos (not me, I left my bag at home this morning, doh) so I might get some emailed to me in due course … but anyway, it was excellent.

edited to add – very nice man from Eyes on Exeter emailed me this evening – here are a few snaps …

We went for lunch in town (had managed to scrounge some money from Steve during the morning!) which was lovely too, the children were all really well behaved, were nice to one another and such good company for me, I love them to bits, so looking forward to a whole week of spending time together. Especially if they can be that nice to one another all the time – in my dreams!

Followed all that by coming home and getting the girls ready for their friends‘ birthday party – realised this morning that I’d forgotten all about piano lessons so had to cancel those at the last minute (ooops ) but thankfully their teacher seemed fine about it. Joe and I are planning to snuggle up for a film while they’re out. Impeccable taste, my son – he just went through the shelf of Disney stuff which all got the thumbs down, flicked past Home Alone, the Mask, and Bill & Ted with me holding my breath (phew!) and finally settled on Indiana Jones. I can cope with an hour and a half of Harrison Ford

First two pictures are of our children’s puppets – Anna and Caitlin made giraffes, think the big one on the right is Caitlin’s. Abbie made a tiger (that thing which looks like a bumble bee) and I can’t remember what Riona’s puppet was … Joe’s effort (with a little help from me) was a Knotty man – those of you who know what his Knotty looks like might be able to recognise some similarity …

And here they all are watching the other ‘puppet shows’.

HE group was a bit weird, none of my children seemed to want to play – well, the girls spent the entire time inside sitting on me, Josiah played, but then when he’d had enough he took it into his head to leave the park and wait for me by the car, without telling anyone – aaargh! Thankfully someone spotted him, and he did cross the (very quiet) road safely, but still. Had to leave shortly after that as he was threatening to do another runner. I’m assuming the girls just weren’t feeling up to much, they’re both full of cold, but I was cross with Joe, he knows better than to walk off without telling me where he’s going. And there I was telling people how sensible my kids were and how (at places like Hesfes) they wouldn’t walk away from the area they knew to be safe …

Today we’re about to leave to spend the day somewhere on the outskirts of Birmingham with the friends we used to house-share with, so it should be a lovely day, I’m looking forward to taking the car for a longer run, but we’ll be home late … and first I have to take some paracetamol, I have a splitting headache …

These two pictures are from the ‘serious’ bit of the exhibition – an animation glove that you wear and when you move your hand, sensors inside the glove pick up movement and the image was projected onto a computer animation on a big screen … and Atari tennis!

Meanwhile this afternoon, the computer games stuff was all set up in the theatre.

They had so many people wanting to play Donkey Konga that they axed the Singstar contest in favour of the bongos! It was pretty cool, you can just about make out from the picture (very bad, sorry, it was really dimly lit!) that the Konga game was being projected onto the big cinema size screen in the theatre, while they had five or six other games consoles from ‘through the ages’ of gaming set up to be played on.

Anna played dance mats and some of the other Nintendo games, and enjoyed every minute of it.

The atmosphere was really fun, there must have been 30 – 40 people sitting watching the bongo game all clapping along. Ahem, I enjoyed chatting to the chap running things, too SorD – S, definitely

I think we may have managed to win one of the vouchers up for grabs, as long as no-one else came along and beat my high score … at one point our family was winning three out of the four songs that were being competed over, but we slowly got knocked off the top spot.

Ah well, it was great fun anyway, and didn’t cost us anything. Might manage to unpack and get back into educational mode tomorrow, on the other hand we might not – we have people coming round for films this evening …