just another morning here

Okay, so it wasn’t a very difficult decision to make The four of us went into town this afternoon and were the first ones there … we looked around the computer animation exhibition yesterday which was good fun, and today was fairly enjoyable too.

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 …

Apparently this includes a Donkey Konga tournament – very tempting

Got confused when K2 14 appeared on the milometer on the way home, then the penny dropped that we’d gone over the thousand mile marker on the round trip. Still, it was fun, we had a great week. I didn’t take any photographs other than this one, which will have limited appeal, but I’m hoping that someone might be able to identify its location!?! Incidentally, it was one thing that the children had remembered from last year and wanted to take a photo of!! If anyone does have any photos of my lot please email them to me!

It was lovely to be with friends and get to know some new ones too – the children really enjoyed themselves, so much that I hardly saw them – I even had to round them up at mealtimes, most days! Most of our time was spent kicking around the hostel, with the odd trip to the park thrown in. Oh, and we went swimming too – driving round Galashiels in search of the pool was probably the most amusing moment of the week for me! We spent a nice day with friends on Wednesday too, and enjoyed taking their dogs out for a walk across the fields where they live. I thought everything at the hostel went smoothly, the food was fantastic this year, no-one was sick (always a good thing ), I got to cuddle the babies, and just generally enjoyed being in the company of friends, and seeing my children enjoying the company of their friends too.

I warmed to the Volvo, as it did go rather well – all the driving was relatively peaceful, and on the way home we popped in to see Stuart and Liz, then Joe’s little friend Isaac and family, who’ve recently moved away too. Eventually got home around 7.30 last night, to fish & chips with Steve

Didn’t set an alarm for this morning, but as I woke up in time we decided to go swimming, then home for brunch, now we’re watching Labyrinth before going to a talk by Brian and Wendy Froud this afternoon at the museum – part of the Animated Exeter stuff. I love Labyrinth, it’s a fab film – I think the kids will really enjoy the talk today, I’m looking forward to it as well. Of course Toby (the baby in the Labyrinth film) is their son, too. We did want to get The Dark Crystal as well, but despite it having been first on my LOVEfilm list for at least 6 weeks now it hasn’t arrived, and we asked at the video shop too but they didn’t have it. We might go to the showing at the university on Wednesday instead. Then we’re off to Ruth‘s for tea, so that will be nice. Laundry and sorting out from the week away will happen eventually

We spent most of the day today concentrating on the Countdown Competition for Animated Exeter. A bit of music practice, handwriting and some times tables practice got done first, then we went on to think up ideas then draw storyboards. The idea is to produce a 10 second film counting down to the beginning of the main feature.

Abbie got really into it, and we ended up with a couple of hours on our own due to Anna being at school and Joe being at Start Right then Sainsbury’s with Steve, so that was really nice. I was so impressed with her storyboard that we went and had it colour copied so that we could keep a copy as well as send one in to the competition. She had loads of ideas for how she was actually going to animate it, as well. I think it’s pretty good – might be a bit disappointed if she doesn’t win! I’d quite like to have a chance to go into the media centre and use all their equipment, even if it is only to produce a 10 second long countdown film. Rofl, Abbie’s comment was “really, the prize is to make a film? Will I get paid?” How utterly Abigail!

Anna took much longer to think of an idea, in fact got quite frustrated because she wanted to do it but couldn’t come up with anything. In the end she has done something penguin themed – only after that did we realise that it probably looks very Pingu-related, when that wasn’t her inspiration at all. Anyway, never mind, it’s the development of the storyboard that is the important bit, isn’t it?

Homemade pizza and salad for tea, now we’re on to baths and bed very shortly. On that note, I must just post this photo, which Steve took yesterday. I popped out to pick up the babysitter and when I left, the kids were having tea. When I got home 40 minutes later they were all in bed. Apparently he took the photo just to prove that he’d bathed them all, in case I didn’t believe him!

Must try and fit another chapter of Little House in the Big Woods in before bed too, otherwise the kids and I are going to forget what’s happened … but I have to say, it might end up waiting till tomorrow. Steve’s down in the dumps because we haven’t sold enough cars this month so I guess we’ll go the usual ‘escape into a film’ route this evening …