We even ended up talking about going on holiday in a big house together again … who knows if/when that will happen but it is just lovely that everyone would want to – we are very blessed

When we got home we had to blow up Josiah’s inflatable dalek, and he ended up ‘sleeping with the enemy’ all night long

Today we had always planned to go sales shopping – something we NEVER normally do, but I confess now, I had planned to buy presents for my family (who we are seeing tomorrow) after Christmas. Well – you get more for your money! We’d already bought a few, but found the last few successfully today. We should have our Christmas celebrations later on every year!

The children spent a bit of their Christmas money too, so they were very happy – Josiah bought the last Harry Potter film on DVD so we came home and watched that, closely followed by Senna (one of Steve’s presents). Looking forward to going over to friends’ tonight … and Steve’s off for the whole week between Christmas and New Year, so it does feel as though the holiday is stretching out nicely

Once home Josiah opened a couple of presents, the cat opened hers (!!), and we all loafed around enjoying presents, eating rubbish food, then eventually watching Dr Who.

All credit to Josiah, who had the busiest day of all of us. He was out of the house around 8.40am for a choir rehearsal 9-10.30. He then had a service to sing from 11am-12.15pm. Then came a brief break while we collected the girls from Orchestra, dropped Abbie to a friend’s, and made it into town with half an hour to grab MacDonalds before he played violin with the Suzuki Group for the best part of three hours. I walked him back to the Cathedral at 4.45pm where he had a rehearsal from 5-6pm before tea in the boarding house and then the Cathedral Choir’s Christmas concert from 7.30-9.30pm. The choristers were given £5 each for having sung the extra service in the morning so he dashed off to buy sweets in each break from the violin playing and enjoyed sharing them during the busking. We’ve been doing this busking each Christmas for five years now, and it’s quite interesting to see how much Josiah has grown up since we started! And Anna too … we had to drag her away from her friends at the end, as they’d started improvising around various pop songs and would happily have carried on for hours I think, but the Harlequins Centre had had enough of them by then

The Choir’s concert was excellent too, we really enjoyed it. Josiah is definitely more confident now and it’s lovely to watch. He’s signed up for an extra choir jaunt to support a choir in North Devon this week, so that shows how much he enjoys the choir aspect of his life – it’s VERY hard work but it is fun too.

Yesterday we had the ECO Christmas concert – very enjoyable as usual and we particularly enjoyed having the Ockment Valley Handbells performing both separately and with the orchestra – I wish I had video-ed some of it but I only have photos I’m afraid. Again fun to see the pictures from Christmas concerts in years gone by and compare them to this year’s!

We now have a week off school, where I’m trying to be as productive as possible so that we can have a proper break from Christmas Eve onwards. Time to stop blogging, have lunch, and get on with some school-work …

In other news – I didn’t get shortlisted for a job that I really wanted. Perfectly happy where I am though so no worries really, just marginally disappointing and very annoying to not even get an interview. Kids all fine; Anna went out busking with school/choir tonight and had a nice time, Abbie is planning birthday events despite the fact that she’s had a birthday treat already, Josiah’s just chugging along with choir and school. Steve’s thinking of new ways to make a million, as usual … and Suzie is enjoying having a new catflap to the big wide world outside. She still comes to give me a cuddle every morning though – and hasn’t brought me any special gifts yet thank goodness!

I played the piano for my school’s tree decorating assembly today which was fun as ever, and we went out for a team Christmas meal this evening; I love Christmas, I really do. People think I’m mean for not really doing decorating at home, or presents at home, but I don’t think my children are going to suffer that much, honestly

It was a good team effort for Christmas dinner, which was really delicious. Gifts were exchanged and these went down well – especially, might I say, the Djeco art kits – big surprise there then! Josiah was also rather taken with his remote controlled tarantula … it was sooo tempting to take it to the Cathedral and hide it under an altar table somewhere …
Boxing day morning was very relaxed and we eventually had a cooked brunch before packing up to come home.

Monday was a snow day, documented in the post below – great fun In the evening, Steve and Josiah stayed at home and I braved driving in the ice and snow down to Broadclyst for their Carol Service. This was supposed to be accompanied by Exeter Youth Orchestra, but in the event, because of the snow and the fact that it really was quite treacherous out, only 6 members of EYO made it! They sounded pretty good considering! We slithered home after that – very hairy driving up our close but kind of fun I suppose.

On Tuesday we did very little – we considered going busking but decided not to in the end; Abbie was unwell and spent half of the day in bed. The kids watched George of the Jungle, and we caught up with the first couple of episodes of The Nativity – really enjoying that this week, some angles included that you don’t often consider when thinking about the story.

Wednesday was Josiah’s day for going back to school; he was up early packing his bag for the boarding house – he really thinks it is a huge treat to stay there! We dropped him off at mid-day for a trip to the pantomime, then he has various rehearsals and services between now and Christmas day itself. Wrapped presents in the afternoon

On Thursday we had Abbie’s birthday treat: a trip to the cinema to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Thought it was much better than the last two, actually, really enjoyed it even though it wasn’t quite true to the book – but I haven’t read it for ages so I’d forgotten until Anna reminded me! Abbie’s favourites for dinner – lasagne followed by mini pavlovas
After that we went out carol singing with friends from Pinhoe Church – freezing but very festive-feeling We watched the last part of the Nativity together – it failed tonight, I thought Mary made far too much fuss giving birth! Anyway, girly sleepovers happened in various places after that.

Friday – Christmas Eve
I decided to go out and make deliveries – the girls hadn’t surfaced by 9.30am! Later on I met Emma, Nick, Robyn & Lola for the Cathedral Crib Service – hadn’t been to it before- it was fun. Robyn particularly enjoyed looking out for Josiah in his dress
Home for lunch, then we packed up and got ready to take all our stuff over to Steve’s parents since we decided to stay there for two nights! Saves driving
As I write, we are sitting in the Cathedral waiting for the Grandisson Service to start- the poshest service of the year perhaps? One has to be seated at least an hour in advance!
After this we’ll have a quick visit with Josiah before going back to drink, nibble, play games, and wait for Christmas

More pics here, only fairly rubbish iphone ones as unfortunately I managed to leave my big camera on the settings for the ECO Christmas Concert last night, so none of the snow pics I took on that came out. Silly.

A quick word about the orchestra concert while I’m here though, it was fab as usual. I don’t think I will ever tire of it! Abbie in particular did really well with her glock parts, and both girls played throughout as they are also part of the Wind Group that were sharing our concert. Sad to say goodbye to leavers, and a number of people didn’t make it because of the weather, but most people did, and we managed to re-sell most of the tickets (we’d been sold out but then there were some cancellations), so it was a success all round I think. Glad that concert was last night before the heavy snow though, I must confess!

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!

I’m also loving this last week of term at work. I have stacks of paperwork type teacher stuff to catch up on, which I probably could do some of this week – but I have decided to leave it all until the holidays and actually enjoy the final week of term with the pupils in class – they are a lot of fun to be with when you’re just doing Christmassy fun stuff and not trying to ‘work’ too hard. Today we papier mached the last layer of a giant beach ball sized orange (we’re having a Christingle service and making a huge Christingle to be ‘made’ at the front of the service as it goes on). We also made place mats for our class Christmas party, made party food and ate it for lunch, then had a DVD in our little sensory area. Well, some of us did; I took one student down to watch his brother in the rehearsal for the lower school nativity – my excuse to get to see it!

Tomorrow I’ve agreed to have one of my favourite (no I know you’re not meant to have favourites; they’re all my favourite, honest!) children from lower down the school in with us, as she Really Doesn’t Want To Be In The Play and is very vocal about it. I love her to bits, so she can come and make a sock snowman with us – we’re having a snow day tomorrow. After we’ve finished with oranges and Christingle making we’re going to have the fake snow out to play with and make snowmen pictures and sock snowmen. And finish the party food, since we had loads left over!
I have so many lovely activities planned and we’re never going to get time to do them all – but never mind, it’s going to be a lovely week. We’re playing fab Christmas music in class all day every day, too, so everyone is singing along and very jolly with it. And the paperwork can wait