just another morning here

I hope I won’t be in too much trouble, as despite her ladyship not being 100% happy with her performances, I’m still proud of my girls. The first words that came out of Anna’s mouth after her piano piece were ‘did you film that? don’t put it on your blog!’, so here’s the cello piece instead: Orientale by César Cui.

The Debussy piano piece that I’ve loved listening to over the past few weeks can be found somewhere nearby We’ll record it properly when our own piano is fully installed.

Abbie, however, was pleased with her performance – she gets quite nervous at these things, and the piano in this church is particularly awful, so despite mistakes she did really well

Josiah doesn’t have lessons with this teacher any more, since he changed schools, so no performance from him today. I’ll have to try and record some of his piano playing when the new piano arrives, as he’s improved a fair bit recently as well.

Apart from that little concert today we’ve had a relatively (and much-needed) laid back day, getting a bit of housework done; the girls both had sleepovers with friends last night so swapped back this morning. Ending the day with a film, dinner, and then baths and bed all round.

No excitement, no presents – what I mean is that every special event under the sun is crammed into a three week period.

In the next three weeks, between us we have two music exams, two orchestra concerts, two ‘teacher’ concerts, a choral event for which the kids are singing extra stuff and I have now been asked to accompany. Oh, and Anna’s got the panto performance which is terribly music heavy and she is practicing *all* the time. We need another piano so that I can practice too!

Not to mention parents evenings (theirs), school fete (mine; we have to attend as one of our work days), and panto auditions (for some reason they are doing these, against my better judgment!). Of course Russ is on holiday during the next two weeks so Steve has next to no flexibility. And my work is more stressy than usual at the moment due to all our children’s reviews mucking up timetables and creating staffing issues. Argh!

Oh well, a bit of pressure never hurt anyone. It will all stop at the end of term, and then the next lot of stress can start – decorating

This weekend has been pleasant though. Saturday was orchestra with added committee meeting, then an afternoon with friends and an evening with more friends. It was Ruth’s 40th party down at the Turf, and a lovely opportunity to catch up with people I haven’t seen for ages.

Steve was off racing, and managed to win the class as well as break the class hill record too. Not bad considering that all his direct competitors have raced the hill before, and it was his first time there. It is kind of frustrating that he’s turning out to be so good at this darned racing lark!

This morning we decided to have a slow start followed by some homework time – Abbie’s got a ‘Britain in the 1960s’ project to do, so she made a start on that, while Anna had various bits and bobs of work to get done, and Josiah did a nice long music practice.

Got the first concert out of the way this afternoon; their cello/piano teacher’s pupil concert. For the grandparents, me to look back on, and anyone else who’s interested and wants to waste 6 minutes (there are worse ways to waste time but not many!), here are videos:

Came home for a bit more sorting out (laundry, argh, bane of my life, still haven’t finished it!), tea, and then we watched The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Don’t want to leave spoilers for anyone who’s not seen it or read the book, but it is recommended by all of us here, but it *will* make you cry.

Finally, for the record. My iPhone lives in my pocket, usually, therefore I am never frightened of losing it, I love it so much that I keep very good track of it. Also, as it would always be in my pocket, I wouldn’t ever have to grab it on the way out of a burning house! Anna’s cello is worth far less than Joe’s violin and also she’d be getting a full size one before too long in any case. So that clears up that little matter, and the rest of the questions were incidental, really – I had trouble making up my own mind which one to mark as ‘correct’ in most places!

Thus starts a series of blog post titled with random quotes heard in my household; that one courtesy of the cello teacher! Makes sense when you realise that Anna’s been playing chords on the cello, we don’t want to hear any other sorts of bottoms around here I do love having cello lessons in the house – means I get to hear the pieces and the accompaniments, and she really does make a nice sound these days, most of the time. Not to be outdone, she has started on her own 100 days practice, aiming to do 1.5hrs a day over the three instruments. 2 days in and she’s still got some enthusiasm, we’ll see how it goes!

We’ve been wondering for a while now how to get through the inevitable Grade 5 Theory hurdle, been trying to find other children who might need to do it at the same time to get together in a group class or something, but not managed to work anything out. Over the weekend a friend presented me with a great idea – a summer camp for kids, specifically focused on Grade 5 Theory! Ideal. Anna’s thrilled with the idea of going on a music camp, and it means we get to (a) get rid of her for a week during the summer holidays, and (b) hopefully get the majority of the way towards passing the theory in the Autumn. It will also help Anna really find out whether she actually likes intensive music study, which might be interesting along the way. Just have to work out how to get from there to Sussex in no time at all on 22nd August, a minor detail … anyone know how to be in two places at the same time?!

I meant to write something here over the weekend but didn’t quite get round to it, this quick post will have to do instead.

The beginning of last week was taken up with music; I had the day off work on Monday to accompany Anna and Josiah to the strings day of the Devon Performing Arts Festival. We’d bumped Anna up into the G6 class which she promptly won, so felt very proud of herself for that – and Joe came joint 2nd in his G3 class too, he played beautifully, the best he’s ever played his piece. And as we pointed out later, coming 1st out of 4 was marginally less impressive than coming 2nd out of 7!!

The ultimate best thing, though, was Joe’s admission later in the day that perhaps I’d been right to say he should carry on practicing his violin, as he would like it when he was older. He didn’t quite admit that he liked practicing (does anyone?) but it was excellent to see him get a glimpse of the POINT of it all! Lovely to hear some of the other kids we know performing as well – and I *really* enjoyed having a day off with Anna and Josiah Have said that next year we’ll have to do a woodwind day as well, then Abbie can have a turn, and Anna can play that jolly bassoon of hers!!

Josiah sat his G1 piano exam on Tuesday lunchtime, no results as yet though. Then on Wednesday night we had the primary school Music Extravaganza, where everyone who does any music at school gets to stand up and do their bit. Abbie played her flute duets with Riona, and all three kids sang in the choir, with Anna’s accompaniment on the piano for a couple of the songs. Oh, and my three had learnt a descant for one piece at the last minute, which they sang well, too

The choir has got huge recently, with a lot of very little ones – on the way home I commented that perhaps they should have a KS1 choir and a KS2 choir, then the very next day a letter came home from school announcing the very same thing. They’re also inviting more hangers on (like Anna!) but while I’d quite like to be part of it alongside the kids, that is the half hour in my week which is mine, all mine. Not sure I can give it up! Lots of other great music opportunities from the school next term but I’ll write about those when we get to them.

Spent Thursday and Friday suffering from what felt like extreme exhaustion, to the point that Steve wondered afterwards if I’d had some sort of virus. Felt worse than just a late night after he got home from Glasgow late on Wednesday. Not clever when trying to make decisions about things. Survived, anyway – and immediately felt better after Josiah’s violin lesson on Friday night, which was such an odd time to suddenly recover that I thought perhaps Steve was right (he is, occasionally)!

Anna came home with an extra cello on Thursday – one that she’s been given, it had been sitting in the school cupboard for years and years. We took it to our strings experts in town to see if it was worth restoring properly but as suspected, it’s not. Steve and Anna are still going to try and get it to a playable state, as cheaply as possible, but then I think they’re actually intending to paint it and hang it on the wall rather than anything else! Still, it will be an original and interesting piece of artwork!

The weekend has been uneventful. Orchestra, housework, I spent some time catching up on jobs at the garage, and Steve entertained the children by burning stuff that needed shredding (shredder has given up the ghost) in an old saucepan on the patio!
On Sunday, Abbie, Joe and I went to church then did lunch at Tescos, then more housework/homework/lego while Steve took Anna out for a Subaru meet on the moors.

Going in his subaru means he can only take one passenger so the rest of us had to be left behind even if we’d wanted to go!
Once everyone was home we watched Jumper together which we all enjoyed. Then early nights all round, even despite the hour change – and they’re still not awake this morning!