On Saturday afternoon, Josiah went off to evensong, and I took the girls out to Creative Stitches. They were incredibly lucky that I’d just been paid and was feeling in need of retail therapy! We had a nice time – it wasn’t as expensive as it could have been, either. They both came home and got on with their new arty stuff while I cooked dinner – my favourite Cottage Pie … comfort food! Steve came first in his class at the new hillclimb at Manor Farm so he came home in a good mood too.

Today I was up early to take Joe to his morning services – then came home and worked (huge ironing pile plus school work) while the girls did more arty bits and bobs. After picking Josiah up we rushed off to Charmouth to watch the hillclimb – it’s the last race of the season and the first time we’ve managed to go and spectate! The venue brought back happy (and some not-so-happy!) memories of Hesfes, and actually it was a good hillclimb venue too – not too steep, and not a long hike from the paddock to the spectating area! Not as much fun to watch as Wiscombe though, although Steve said it felt fun to drive. (nb turn speakers off before watching video otherwise Abbie’s annoying cheering voice will grate somewhat – I did tell her not to do it but she thought I was joking, apparently )

Anyway, after the race we stood around chatting for a while, then went down to the town for a cache, then to the beach for an earthcache where we had to find fossils, something the kids love doing. Steve found a whole ammonite which looks like we could polish it up – so have been googling that this evening – anyone know anything about that?

Now home and trying to fit too much ‘finishing off’ into one evening – there’s ironing to finish, school work to finish (all four of us schoolies have some!), not to mention a shopping list that needs making and other general tidying up …

Choir at Abbie’s school (which Anna also attends) started again, so another activity to add into the mix. Plus, annoyingly, the little path between Anna’s school and my school is blocked by drain-works at the moment so our little arrangements for instrument care have had to change – sad that I’m bothered about these things but they all make a difference to general logistics!! There were changes in evensong timetable this week too so that threw us as well! Still, we got to the end of the week, and on the spur of the moment decided to take fish’n'chips over to Steve’s parents on Friday night which was lovely

Saturday dawned bright and early with a little hoo-ha over uniform for Joe’s choir practice – they don’t usually wear uniform for Saturday morning practice but they were laying Remembrance Day wreaths so uniform was a good idea, but we didn’t realise until literally the last minute! Luckily our friends round the corner are far more with it about church timetables than we are so they keep us on the straight and narrow with regard to these sorts of things! I had clocked Remembrance Sunday, of course, but was unprepared for events a day beforehand!

The rest of Saturday was taken up with orchestra rehearsals, housework/jobs session (definitely a ‘quick lick and promise’ style housework this weekend!) while cooking dinner (cooked lunch as we knew we wouldn’t have time for tea!) then a concert at the cathedral for Josiah, then he went off to Grandma’s for the night while Steve and I took the girls to their Youth Orchestra concert.
Abbie was playing percussion in the concert, after only rehearsing with the percussion section since the beginning of term, so she was quite nervous, but we only noticed a couple of obvious errors (the rest were well hidden, lol!).
All good fun but pretty tiring – though *really* nice to have Steve with us for a change

Today has been lovely. We had a relaxed morning (caught up with last night’s X-Factor in bed this morning!), bacon & egg butties, then church for me; Steve collected Josiah, then we met up back at home. The girls stayed here this afternoon and ended up on the computer pretty much all afternoon (I would but I know who they take after so I can’t really say anything!). Anna took a break to do some theory work as her G5 exam is on Wednesday. We’ve told her that if she doesn’t pass she has to pay for a re-take! It’s about the only exam that I really don’t care how she does as long as she passes!

Steve, Josiah and I took the Hymer down to the coast for the afternoon. We sat on Paignton seafront and ate a picnic, then walked along the pier and the beach Shockingly, Josiah managed to go all the way down to the sea and NOT get soaking wet!!

After that we had a very exciting drive down to Cockington Country Park, on the hunt for a geocache (of course). I’d asked a friend whether it would be ok for the Hymer to drive there and he assured me that it would be, but we were breathing in and hoping we didn’t meet anything all the way there!! It was Very Tight. Steve did some pretty impressive driving and then parking manouevres, I must admit.
And we found the cache, which was a fab hide, although not quite as hard as I’d been expecting

Home for slow cooker dinner, glass of red wine, and laundry sorting plus a couple more preparations for the week ahead before sitting down for the X Factor results. I wonder if I should start voting, or perhaps just stop watching

Finally, I don’t have any pumpkin left after using the last of ours for pumpkin pie this week, but if I did, I would be baking these Chocolate Peanut butter pumpkin muffins – saw them on my friend’s blog and they look delicious – perhaps even worth getting another pumpkin for – but only once we’ve finished the existing pumpkin pie! At least if the link is here I’ll be able to find it again when we get another pumpkin in a veg box.

Now it must be time for bed, as I’ve found myself watching some bloke on tv hypnotising a lobster … but at least that gives me a random blog post title …

Ok, here’s the proper post. For the past few years, Steve has gone to see the Rally GB in Wales with Mr Portico. When I realised that the rally fell on the first weekend of half term this year, I decided that it would be a great idea for us all to go (hoping that the Portico family might fancy it as well), so booked a campsite in the general area for that weekend and a few days afterwards. As it turned out, we were left to go it alone, even though we did spend a very lovely afternoon with the Portico one and all on the Sunday.

The rally was fun … well it would have been fun if it hadn’t been so wet … well, it was still fun, just very wet as well. Lots of driving and walking between stages, and so much mud. I probably would go again, but I’m not sure I’d get the kids there again without much kicking and screaming! We enjoyed Sunday morning’s stage the most – mainly because it was dry, at Walters Arena you could see so much more of each car – *and* we had an hour extra to play with due to the clocks going back! Forgot the big camera (doh) so not many photos since the iphone isn’t known for its photographic abilities.

After the rally on Sunday we had the pleasure of catching up with friends on Southerndown Beach. They humoured me and not only did we work together to find info needed for an earthcache there, we also did two more real caches. I think the last one they only took me to so that they could laugh at me getting my feet wet on the stepping stones across the river to find it, but it was fun.

After that we had three more days to fill, which, I think, was probably too much given that we didn’t have any plans. The Hymer was fine, but not the most spacious of vehicles for 5 people really. Luckily it was relatively dry for those three days and the children spent a lot of time at the campsite’s trampoline, inventing games which they played for hours.

We also walked along the coast from Llantwit Major to St. Donat’s (yes, another earthcache) and had icecreams despite the drizzle. Actually this was good, and I do enjoy earthcaches as they give you things to look for and learn about along the way – I wouldn’t even have noticed half of it otherwise!

We ambled round the shopping centre in Bridgend, went to the cinema and watched Up in 3D (fun but I could have lived without it!), then on the last day we sneaked into the first round of Britain’s Got Talent auditions with a friend for a couple of hours – fascinating, but we didn’t stay long – went off to do the Dr Who exhibition in Cardiff, as the kids wanted to see it (grown ups were slightly disappointed with it really).

After they’d warmed up again we bought chocolate instead of ice creams, then got back on the tram and went to Alicante where we climbed up el Castillo Santa Barbara – some of us more happily than others (you will notice that the girls aren’t in any of these photos!).

Must also mention the strange yoghurts that we had after tea, apparently biscuit flavour! ‘sabor a galleta’, with a picture of a biscuit on the label. Made us laugh, anyway! Ended the day with films and scrabble again A lovely penultimate day.

Late afternoon hot tub sessions for all, then a film, tea, tetris puzzles and scrabble

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!).