just another morning here

Steve and I took Abbie and her friend up to the LG Arena in Birmingham to see Miley Cyrus in concert last night They had a fab time, though on balance it was a long haul for us!

Meanwhile Anna stayed with Grandpa and Grandma, helping Grandpa with labelling and stamping 1600 envelopes for a mailshot. Josiah is staying at the Cathedral school boarding house while singing his way through Christmas. We’ll see him later on …

We spent the afternoon at a concert held by the girls’ piano/recorder teacher and lots of her students. She teaches saxophone, flute, and clarinet as well as piano, so it was a varied programme.

The raffle was hugely exciting too, or so the kids thought – I managed to win a pair of tickets to Rosemoor Gardens, which the children were not that impressed about (they wanted the Woodlands tickets!), but I’m sure we’ll enjoy a trip out there one day

Came home and made cinnamon toast for tea, then early nights all round

From Helmsley we headed down to Birmingham on Friday, to spend the weekend with friends there. We used to share a house with these friends years ago when our children were babies (well, some of them!), and it’s amazing how easy it still feels to live alongside one another – for a weekend at least

We had a lovely time celebrating their son John’s birthday over the weekend with a bowling party, as well as fireworks in the garden, marshmallow roasting, and then pancakes for breakfast the next day Had a lovely walk through a park in Birmingham that I did ask the name of but can’t remember it any more!

Steve and I were both feeling pretty rough all weekend with cold type things, and Liz took pity on Steve, feeding him various remedies and generally being far more sympathetic than I was. Still managed to enjoy learning and playing San Juan with Nig & Liz though Did bring back memories of late nights playing Monopoly and Risk in the good old days

The other reason for stopping in Birmingham was so that we could take Josiah and Miriam (also just started learning suzuki violin) to the National Suzuki Concert which was at the Symphony Hall. Fabulous concert overall, we really enjoyed it, and the playtogether part at the end really was amazing to see. Hundreds of children and the odd adult as well all playing either the simplest of piece, or an accompaniment to the simplest piece, which just sounded fantastic together.

The standard throughout was excellent, at all levels of ability. Perhaps next time our two will be joining in?! They enjoyed their own playing together, anyway

Home relatively late on Sunday so we just fell into bed and left sorting out the detritus in the van until the next day!

Tickets to the Suzuki concert arrived this morning, Circle Row F Seats 35 – 38. Not the most amazing seats in the world but they could have been worse, I suppose …