just another morning here

We came to the conclusion that when one’s birthday is so close to Christmas that there’s hardly any time to do any treat-type thing at the time, it doesn’t really matter if you have your birthday present a bit early. Abbie’s just done 3 days on a riding/stable management course (ie riding and about the same amount of mucking out!) as her birthday present this year. She’s had a wonderful time

Today was Josiah’s 10th birthday party; a little in advance of his actual birthday but practically the only time near to his birthday that we could fit in a party!

He really wanted to go out to the woods, build a den, and sleep in it – but this was a little outside of Steve and my comfort zone! Instead we found this National Trust Wild Tribe event going on which was about as close as we could get, so we booked places for two carfuls of boys!

They had a wonderful time in the woods, once they stopped being over-excited and actually managed to get on with building a den. Their shelter turned out rather well, complete with bracken waterproofing on roof and walls. They managed to get all seven of them plus an extra friend that they made on the day into the den for lunch

After our picnic we went down to the main campfire where a couple of the boys did some firelighting, and the group cooked sausages and then roasted marshmallows. Our gang of boys climbed down to the stream to build dams and bridges … then they came back up to the dens and just played in the woods.

I’m sure they could have played for much longer if we’d let them – but the National Trust rangers were probably tired of us by then! Plus it had started to rain a tiny bit. This is the National Trust blog with a post about last month’s Wild Tribe event … perhaps this one will get written up by them at some point (I dread to think what they’ll write about our gang of exuberant boys!)

Anyway, after that fantastic day, we headed back towards home to Pizza Hut for tea, meeting the girls there so that they could join us for something to eat. The boys were very excitable all the way through the meal which made it marginally stressful but the waiter was very good with them and didn’t seem to mind too much.

We had a little bit of time at home for Joe to open presents/cards, then we stuck Home Alone on the big screen for a chill out before parents arrived to collect the boys. They all said they had a lovely day, and Josiah certainly enjoyed himself, and that’s what counts

… because we have had such a lovely few days at school, and I have a fab set of photos to prove it! Unfortunately a lot of the students have been off ill, so they’ve missed all the fun While that admittedly does make life a bit easier for us all, we’re genuinely missing them and want them back. Today we baked stained glass window Christmas cookies, had our Christmas dinner, which included re-filling party poppers with flour and shaving foam and having a very raucous time (no alcohol involved either!), which the kids thought was hilarious. We raced wind-up reindeer from our crackers, watched a DVD and had a quick practice for our carol service tomorrow. Just lovely. And here’s a photo of yesterday’s sock snowmen – a hit all round.

Dead easy, too – acquire a white sports sock (I bought mine but if you have odd ones lying around they’ll do!) and paint the elastic part. When that is dry, fill with rice up to the heel, and tie a knot in the top. Fold the elastic part back over the knot and this makes the hat, then simply add a scarf to form the head and body, and decorate. It was a hit all round.

Before all of that we had a delicious breakfast for Abbie’s birthday, and she looked pretty excited to see everything in her Chemistry set – she’s dashing off out to Panto rehearsals in a minute so we won’t see much of her this evening but she’s had a good day Happy Birthday!

We’ve had a lovely day. It started very early with Josiah feeling sick but luckily he recovered before too long. The kids had obviously been working hard in secret last night, because when we came down for our ‘surprise’ breakfast (pancakes) there was this banner in the hallway for Steve’s imminent birthday. We’d decided to celebrate today instead as the day was free.

After breakfast Josiah went off to perform chorister duties while we sorted laundry (the girls paired socks while I did the ironing!) and caught up on the Over the Rainbow final (these things are important, you know ). Then Steve and I went in for Mattins … somehow ended up sitting on Cathedral Green with smoothies instead though – it was just too nice outside!

We collected the boys and dropped Will off, then picked up the girls and drove out to the Jack in the Green where we met Steve’s parents and Grandad for a celebratory dinner. I really like the Jack in the Green – I had some really delicious roast butternut squash ravioli

We’d arranged to meet my caching friend down at Parke Estate near Bovey Tracey for a geocaching walk afterwards. This turned out to be a really lovely place to be – and we didn’t even know that Parke existed before this, unbelievably, despite having had NT membership for ages! A couple of the caches were ‘splash & cache’, so getting wet was obligatory, at least for those people who found the caches (Anna and Josiah both times, I think! I got my feet wet too but they had shoes on so they were much quicker than me!). All good fun, until the children got tired, Josiah rolled a rock down the path and it hit the back of Abbie’s foot, then they all lost it! Luckily that was at the end of the walk Anyway, I’m up to 425 finds now but my friend has hit 500 – I’ve long given up all hope of keeping pace!

Home for baths, putting laundry away, a bit of revision all round, then bed for the kids and a film for Steve and I