just another morning here

Last week … some more fairly rubbish days at work, but apart from that:

Anna went off to London on Saturday for the Open Day at the JRAM. She went with friends who we know through Suzuki violin and who have been attending since September. Anna was fairly impressed by the whole thing and is filling in her application form this week – time will tell what happens …

The rest of us were at orchestra as usual – I got some work done at the same time, then in the afternoon I took Josiah out to Crealy for a short play before a Stringathon World Record Attempt for the most players in a string orchestra playing one piece at the same time.

It was a lot of fun and sounded quite awesome, however I don’t think they managed to break the record of 362 players – so it may have to be repeated!

On Sunday I went out caching – while Abbie went into town with her boyfriend They took some other friends with them too. Not quite sure what they did! Anyway, she’s not the only person in this household to have had some sort of Valentine’s Day celebration, Anna got a card too though she doesn’t know who it is from!

Anyway into this week, we’re just trying to survive another really busy week in the run up to half term (and yes, half term means I am half way through the year!).

Tomorrow I have an Enterprise Day at my school (where we are muddling all the upper school classes up for an Apprentice-style day tasked with using beetroot in a creative way!), while Josiah has his House Music Festival in which he’s playing a solo. Anna has a GCSE options evening as well … though if she had her way she wouldn’t choose any of them – they’re all too much like hard work! Can’t think where she gets that attitude from

When we were home educating I used to love Crealy, it was a haven of peace and quiet during school hours, and I could spend ages just sitting reading while the children played. Now, however, it is school holidays and weekends when we go, it’s so much busier, and it’s pretty awful! But the kids still love it, and so when Josiah asked to have his birthday party there we agreed. He invited four friends from school, plus him and the girls, so seven children to keep track of – plus Robyn, who thankfully came with Adam and Emma which added to the adult-child ratio!

Anyway, it was loud, chaotic, we mislaid various children at different times, but I think everyone had a good time. And now it’s over, no more birthday parties for a good six months. And no more at Crealy ever again, if I have my way! At least now they’re all over 7 they can go on rides by themselves!

Came home for Father’s Day roast dinner with Steve’s dad here too, played Joe’s new wii game together, and now have slumped. Kids have a non-pupil day tomorrow so they’re home with Steve while I still have to work so I’ll be up early on my own for once.

We all went to Crealy today to celebrate Robyn’s 3rd birthday. It was sunny but really windy which made it feel cold, I wished I’d worn more clothes! Had a lovely day anyway and the kids all enjoyed themselves

We worked hard this morning to get stuff done so that we could have some time out at Crealy with friends today. I wrote last week about the Air-Joe guns we discovered at Crealy; but today I had the camera with me. It was even more fun with friends to play with! The boys discovered the new climbing wall as well, and played on it for ages.

We walked down across all the bridges and around the lake where we saw some gorgeous brand new ducklings, honestly they looked so new they could have been going for their first ever swim in the lake. The mother duck didn’t like me getting so close with the camera and I had to move quickly at one point when she came towards me in a threatening tail wagging sort of a way. Even the boys thought they were cute!