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:

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.

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!

The full set of photos is here

And this was our last day. Lots of waiting around after the car broke down, but we had AA cover so while it was a little bit annoying, it was nowhere near as bad as it could have been, in lots of ways. We were only 6 or 7 hours late in getting home, so not too awful really!

Joe’s been doing lots of maths – shapes/area related pages from CIMT – and we had fun looking for hexagons and pentagons in the house one morning. He’s also learned lots about time and calendars recently, which is a real pain in the neck – when he asks me what the time is, I have to be precise to the minute, otherwise I’m in trouble. He knows exactly how many days it is until his birthday, and seems to spend ages thinking about time and dates, working out random useless pieces of information, or giving me a running commentary about how long it is until the next exciting event in the day. This pedantry extends to all areas of life actually but I guess I only have myself to blame for that

Josiah’s also doing a fair bit of reading, mainly late at night in bed. His favourites at the moment are the Usborne Flip Flap body book, and How Your Body Works (the one with all the robot pictures). Since he lost his knotty a few months back we haven’t replaced it because we realised that he wasn’t sucking his thumb while he didn’t have it … so he hasn’t been thumbsucking recently but the downside is that he hasn’t been going to sleep until about 10pm most nights! Still, we think he has memorised the entire Chronicles of Narnia from audiobooks

I took him to Crealy on Thursday, then he got invited out there again the next day with Robyn and Adam, so he’s done plenty of running around like a loon. He’s doing really well with swimming lessons at the moment as well, which is such a relief, after years of it being really hard work – their teacher came and told me that Abbie and Josiah had both swum well in their lessons on Thursday.

The girls both enjoyed dressing up for World Book Day on Thursday (Abbie went to school as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, and Anna went as Alice in Wonderland). On Friday Anna went to a friend’s house after school, and Abbie had a friend back here. Anna’s been busy doing lots of drawing from various ‘how to draw’ books, some of the results have been quite impressive actually!

The usual music stuff has been going on as well – for all three of them. Joe’s just carrying on as per usual with his violin, very nearly at the end of Suzuki Book 1 now, although I suspect there will be a fair bit of review to do before he’s at graduation standard with all the pieces. Abbie’s working towards Grade 1 piano in the summer and is sounding pretty good most of the time. Anna’s playing in some music festival or other in a couple of weeks, so she’s practising for that as well as for Grade 4 cello in the summer.

Had a bit of a stress at the end of the week as my car got written off – only bent metal, thankfully no-one was hurt and I wasn’t driving at the time but still a bit of a nightmare generally, takes a fair bit of emotional energy to deal with stuff like that, we discovered.

Can’t remember which night it was but the smoke detector went off for some unknown reason in the early hours of one morning – batteries are fine, and we couldn’t find any other reason for it – but Steve got up and checked everything, we both work up and couldn’t get back to sleep at all afterwards, so that probably didn’t help the latter part of the week either! We must be getting old, when one broken night wipes us out for the next couple of days!

The weekend has been nice though, lots of kicking around together. Kids brought me belated-birthday-breakfast-in-bed on Saturday which was great, so it was a lazy morning. Then we went up to Dartmoor and climbed up Haytor which everyone enjoyed.

The children went and stroked a nearby pony for ages, I was surprised by how friendly it was actually, I expected them just to run away. On the way back the kids decided to roll rather than walk down the hill!

Went out last night to a housewarming/birthday party of some friends who both have the same birthday as me; played poker there too, while watching the lunar eclipse! Steve’s gone out to play poker again this evening with a different set of friends.

Today it has been chucking down with rain *all day* so we’ve been at home just chilling out. Abbie did some painting – really nice pictures, some of them. Then she had great fun with a bath bomb kit – I think she made one bath fizzer and then spent the rest of the afternoon putting various ingredients together, then covering the kitchen in red and blue fizzy stuff

Anna and Joe have been playing their way through Lego Star Wars on the PS2 together – fantastic game, they’re both really enjoying it. In the midst of that Steve took the PS2 apart as he had done a couple of days previously, the game kept crashing – it is on a blue disc that apparently the PS2 lasers can’t always read well so he adjusted the laser which fixed it for them so they were quite impressed with their old dad for once

Steve and I have been working on a new website for the garage, and doing a bit more of Abbie’s jigsaw, and sorting out laundry, and that’s about it.

The kids had had enough by then, so they stayed in the van playing DSs while Steve and I went back for another look around on our own. I found a quirky car that I was sorely tempted to order, just for fun – I might go back tomorrow The man said I could have it in any colour I wanted – what do you reckon, pink or purple?! It sort of reminded me of the original Twingo (don’t like the new one), I always wanted to import one when they were first around but I don’t think I could even drive at the time!

The idea of building a kit car does appeal to me – people often ask us what we would drive if we had the choice and because we drive so many different cars we never know what to answer, as there really isn’t a car that we’d choose – but something as individual as a kit car might be different. One day, when the ideal donor car comes in in part exchange, I’ll do it … Anna and I saw some really cool pink and chrome handbrakes and gearsticks, so we started getting really into the idea of it, at which point Steve went off it, I wonder why?!!

Anyway, stop dreaming, back to reality. Came home and watched Narnia on DVD, then Anna went over to Caitlin’s to do homework, I cooked a roast dinner, and the other three did a bit more of Joe’s science kit. Photos are one from the other day when we started, and the rest from today … I think the biggest thumbs up was for the egg being sucked into the jar

Had dinner, now Steve’s travelled miles to go and see the new Bond film as three nearer cinemas were sold out! Obviously a popular choice of activity tonight!

Today we (the girls and I) have shopped (with a nice coffee/hot chocolate pitstop in there somewhere), baked, and gamed. Oh, and done blog-related fiddling too, watched a film, and then some TV this evening. A friend popped in and sat in the kitchen while I baked, so it was nice to have some adult company as well as spending girly time with Anna & Abbie.

Meanwhile Josiah has spent the day chez Portico, while Steve and Chris went off to some rally or other to take photos of cars. Yawn. I’m expected to enthuse about these after the event, but my favourite one is this one … because I think it’s far more interesting to look at people!