just another morning here

After church today (we had to go to church first so that the girls could show off their newly learnt books of the Bible in order; also, apparently church is more interesting than drag racing!) we went out to meet Steve et. al. at the drag strip nearby.

Spent a few hours there watching him race and keeping him company while pushing the car through the queue for the next one … then on the way out found our favourite car of the day. Who knows how fast it goes, not very, I imagine, but it looked damn cool! Purple and cream stripy upholstery with loads of fab chrome accessories, I loved it!

Short video of some of today in case anyone is remotely interested:

I’m writing ‘number one’ in the title as I’m quite sure Steve will be going back for more, he (and Joe) had a great day out at the Sunday Street Wars thing today.

By comparison the girls’ day was much more sedate – we just went to church, and Abbie went to a party in the afternoon while Anna & I played MySims and cooked.

The boys, meanwhile, had the time of their lives – well Steve did, anyway – drag-racing the Alpina. Friends at church were quite shocked that Steve was racing our ‘family’ car today, but hey, this is Steve, so it seems fairly normal to me! Josiah and Russ went along to spectate, so the video is courtesy of Joe, while the photos on flickr are from Russ. Looks like it was a lot of fun, I will have to go along as well next time.

Started very early this morning dashing down to the workshop to pick up a car, since mine had ended up there on Saturday in the course of a rescue mission for my parents, who broke down on their way here, dropping my sister at University. Not the start to her year that she had imagined but luckily they were coming here rather than anywhere else in the country, as it was relatively easy to sort them out (in the first instance anyway, Terry hasn’t looked at their car yet, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!).

Steve’s dad is on holiday for a couple of weeks, and Terry our mechanic is ill with a horrible inner ear thing that means he can’t stand up, so we were awfully short staffed today. Meant that we had to give up on the home ed group trip we were meant to be going on but hey ho, that’s life.

Once the girls had gone to school, Josiah and I ended up at the office for the day, which was fine – we chucked a load of stuff in a box and de-camped there quite instead (as long as I have internet I’m happy!), the phone didn’t even ring until 11am so not too strenuous.

Joe did violin practice and then some of his Roman lapbook project; today he wrote out a few vocab words for a flappy thing in the lapbook, and we learnt about Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius too – looked at lots of pictures online. The whole Roman thing is making Joe want to go to Italy, he keeps saying that would be a good Home Ed trip to go on (the Roman Baths not good enough!). Went home for about an hour to scoop Abbie up then back to the office for the end of the day.

We are completely knackered. Had to be up really early both days in order to get kids dropped off/cars into the shopping centre before any people showed up. And being nice to people all weekend is clearly more than I can take! Same goes for repeating the same sales pitch type lines:
Would you like to enter our competition? Guess how many balloons are in the van.
No, it’s free to enter (don’t bother reading the fluorescent signs announcing the FREE COMPETITION! all over our cars).
No, there aren’t any in the back of the van, just in the cab.
Well done, we’ll ring you if yours is the closest guess! (unless you are aged around 10, and forget to put your dialling code on your entry, in which case we’ll spend hours searching on BT until we find you – story tbc!)
Can I interest you in £25 off your next service? What car do you drive? Are you thinking of changing your car soon?

Still, it was a good weekend, and probably really worthwhile. We chatted to loads of people, and Russ even sold one of our cars yesterday! Guess time will tell how good it was if/when we see vouchers come into the workshop, or have any customers into the sales office who arrive because of the show.

The children spent one day being spoiled by Grandma and the next day being spoiled by their Great Aunty Jacky so they’ve not had too bad a weekend either! Anna did a trial at the Exeter Children’s Orchestra yesterday and really enjoyed that, she is considering dropping Stage by Stage after Christmas in favour of the orchestra this year, no final decision yet though.

Now wondering if everything is ready for Monday morning – if it’s not, tough, because I am too tired to do it. Another weekend where I really think our household would fall apart if we both worked full time, we have lived on takeaway and been fit for nothing by 8pm!