just another morning here

Half term seemed all too brief, and we were all right back to the busyness of life (which really does seem to be like an unstoppable rollercoaster sometimes!) this week. Nice to see the kids at my school again though – I do enjoy my job

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 …

This post will may or may not get added to at some point … suffice to say at the point at which I wondered ‘whose stupid idea was this anyway’, I remembered that it was mine, ha. There were some highlights and we did have fun, but on balance I’m glad to be home and wish I hadn’t squandered quite so much of half term as it feels like a lot of catching up to do now!

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.

Had a lovely meal at the Watermill in Ogmore afterwards, before saying goodbye and going our separate ways.

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).

And then we came home. And now, as every weekend, I’m left with a washing mountain!

OK, so we already established that the main thing we will remember about our break in Windsor is the rain, but it wasn’t so bad really!

On Saturday we left early and arrived in time to set up before the Grand Prix qualifying. Yes, we were sad enough to plan that, and yes, we had looked at the weather forecast and decided that taking a tv was a good idea. No, we are not proper campers, we have a campervan with hookup whenever possible Saturday was grey and overcast, a bit drizzly, but not too bad.

Amerden Campsite was lovely, friendly live-onsite owners who were really helpful. It is *right* by the M4, so not the sort of campsite to sit around at really, because the noise of the motorway does get to you after a while, but I didn’t notice it above the noise of the rain anyway! It was a great place to use as a base because of its proximity to the river, Windsor, Legoland, London etc., and comes recommended.

Anna, Joe and I went out for a bike ride while the qualifying was on, our mission was to find a pub for meeting up with the Portico on Monday. Got as far as Eton Wick without seeing one, so bought a Radio Times, some chocolate bars, and cycled back again instead.

By Sunday the rain had set in, and we didn’t venture out of bed until about 11am I don’t think! We’d taken a good collection of DVDs, DSs and books The bed does get a bit squashed with 5 of us in it though! Got up, had brunch, then Steve settled down for the Grand Prix. It cleared up a tiny bit around lunchtime so I watched the first lap (boring, no-one crashed or overtook, so the race was pretty much a done deal) and then went out on my bike again, Anna and Joe opted to come as well. It was getting very wet by the time we got to the edge of Maidenhead but found the Blue River Cafe which had been recommended to us by the site owners, so mission accomplished there. We were pretty soaked by the time we got back to the campsite though. Sunday evening we … watched more DVDs

Monday was STILL wet. One DVD before showers and breakfast, then High School Musical kept us occupied until it was time to leave. Steve hadn’t seen it so it was a must-see for him Then we cycled to meet C&A et. al. at the restaurant. Had a lovely lunch, all the while looking out of the window wondering when the rain would stop (it didn’t). They came back to the campsite and the kids sat in their van while we sat in ours, then they watched a DVD in the awning, thank goodness for DVDs!

Tuesday dawned sunny, and we breathed a sigh of relief as it was the day nominated for Joe’s birthday treat, a trip to Legoland. Had a good day there but it was horrendously busy, I guess that’s to be expected on the one sunny day in half term!

On Wednesday we’d planned to cycle along the river to Windsor and go to the castle, but quickly shelved the idea of cycling as it was pouring with rain again, so we drove there instead. Had a good time there despite the rain, loved Queen Mary’s Doll’s House, and the State Rooms. Joe in particular enjoyed listening to the commentary in each area.

We spent a good hour in the educational room doing the ‘family activities’, which consisted of cutting, sticking, and colouring castle pictures – kept us all happy and dry! The rain stopped just as we left the castle so we meandered around Windsor for an hour, including an icecream in a Ben & Jerry’s cafe (another thing Exeter is lacking!). Back to the campsite for a chilled evening how camping *should* be, the kids playing out with other children and us drinking wine

Thursday was a dry morning too, we packed most things down with a minimum of fuss although somehow overnight the zip on the awning door broke, must remember to take stuff to fix it with us to Kessingland at the end of June. As we left it was just beginning to rain and it rained the whole way back, so we felt pretty pleased to have packed up in the dry.

All in all a good week, not sure I would have lasted the whole time – or even gone in the first place given the weather forecast – had we not had the van to snuggle up in, the rain really was awful, but it was kind of fun at the same time. Whole photoset on flickr

This photo, taken from the Portico van on bank holiday Monday, typifies our week! We had one nice day, which we spent at Legoland for Josiah’s birthday treat. The rest of the days were completely wet, but we still had a good time. More later but priorities now (after blogging of course) are showers and then violin lesson, quick trip to Sainsbury’s, etc.