just another morning here

Can’t think of a good title for this post, too late to care now, suggestions in the comments box and I’ll change it later!

Have had a fabulous if a little exhausting weekend, lots of travelling of various sorts, but also lots of fun spending time with some of our best friends, which makes it all worthwhile. (was that too soppy?! )

Saturday saw us have a very lazy morning with a delicious brunch, and then we headed into London to visit the slides at the Tate Modern. Simultaneous delight and anxiety is about the right description for my feelings as we walked into the turbine hall – the queues were soooo long, never mind the sliding itself! So we queued for tickets, then walked along the river for an early dinner at the Gourmet Pizza Co., then back to the Tate to queue more to use the tickets! Still it was a good day which we all enjoyed. More photos here

Today was E’s 6th birthday, the real reason for our visit – lovely to see him opening and enjoying presents, and then stick around for his party which was one of the most peaceful kids’ parties I’ve been to for a long time (usually I avoid them like the plague, even for my own children!). 13 children sat around the table painting pottery for a good hour and a half, courtesy of a lovely mobile pottery company (which I’ve forgotten the name of, otherwise I’d link to it).

We had to leave very shortly after the birthday lunch, to make sure we were back in time for Anna’s rehearsal – the penultimate (extremely long, and the first one actually at the theatre) rehearsal for the Wizard of Oz which she is taking part in all next week. Have had dinner thanks to Emma’s cooking, still need to do a fair bit of sorting out but there’s plenty of evening left …

Pretty varied day today! Started by taking Anna to Stage by Stage, and from there went on to help some friends move some furniture with the van. That didn’t take too long, so then I had to go and return one pack of t-shirt transfer paper (I’d bought plenty as I didn’t want to run out but then didn’t actually need all of it.). That took us up to PC World, and usually while we’re there I let the children look in the pet shop which is next door.

Today that was a big mistake, as I forgot that Joe had some birthday money left over. He was absolutely desperate to buy something but about the only thing he had enough money for was a goldfish! So we came home with a bowl to set up, and one of us will be taking him back tomorrow to pick up a fish (which he thinks he is going to call Goldie, how imaginative) I guess I could have said no, but it seemed a bit mean! My track record with fish is Not Good though so I hope the poor thing will survive longer than a week!

Got home, set up the wretched bowl, then made some more banana cakes, with the added improvement of chocolate chips

A while later the Beans arrived for lunch, on the way home from a week’s camping nearby. It was lovely to see them, SB went off and played with Abbie and Josiah, while BB pottered around … just nice to have ‘real’ time together, internet friends are great but even better in person as well!

They left (hope the journey home was okay!) and minutes later so did we; we went to see Anna’s end of summer school week presentation, which was an hour long performance of ‘Fame!’ I thought it was pretty good considering it was a wide age range of kids there and they’d only had a week to prepare it in. Anna had a tiny moment of glory as the maths teacher – so the other children in the photo are actually *meant* to be looking bored, as it’s a maths lesson!

Then after that we had to wait around for her to do a second performance, so we headed over to the Picture House Cinema just over the road, where there is a rather nice bar, had a drink, and taught Abbie & Joe to play Othello. Which ended up as Steve and I playing Othello

Finally came home and I turned round and went out again for a meal with friends, which was a nice ending to the day for me, while Steve and the kids ended theirs with dinner and then back to back Simpsons

Decided we had to do something with our day today so got up and headed down to Berry Pomeroy Castle. Which was great, kids really enjoyed it, so did we. They especially liked the commentaries, and searching for the knights (although Josiah insisted on calling them henchmen, which was quite amusing!). A couple more piccies are on Steve’s photostream but here are a few to be going on with …

Had lunch in the van and then came back, as Anna had dance rehearsals all afternoon. A friend popped by for a chat, and we’ve been tidying up here as we have other friends coming to stay tomorrow. And that’s about it

We’ve generally had a good week here; all apart from Josiah who has been perfecting the art of the silent refusal strop. Which, after a week of dealing with it over practically everything we’ve asked him to do, we’ve concluded is just as bad as the noisy, screaming, shouting, kicking, throwing yourself on the floor strops that the girls were (and sometimes still are!) masters of.

He’s stropped about going to school, going to swimming, going to violin, doing his violin practice, going to bed, which *way* to walk to school, being allowed to walk down the road with a coat over his face (he wasn’t, and he thought he ought to be!), which pants to wear, which shoes to wear … you name it, he’s stropped over it. Which at least makes you think it’s a general phase-type-thing rather than a specific problem he has in any one area! Anyway, the less said about that the better, as otherwise it’s been a good week.

On Wednesday I ended up working on some website admin in the morning; teaching people how to use WordPress, so that amused me In the afternoon I had the pleasure of looking after my niece Robyn … this is something that may become more of a regular occurence, and I’m quite pleased about it. Apart from racking my brains as to what exactly I used to do with just one 15mo (it’s a long time ago, okay?! ) it was great … I got all nostalgic over a couple of Abbie’s old board books and generally had fun pottering around with a toddler in tow. And then I got to hand her back! Perfect!!

The children had piano/recorder/violin/Stage by Stage after school, manic as usual. Steve was on the violin run though, and I had my friend Becca over for tea and chatting afterwards which was really lovely.

Anna has been offered a place at the Stage studios dance school for ballet so she came home pleased about that. She’s going to have to stop swimming lessons in order for us to manage it both time and moneywise, but she seems to be okay about that. She can swim well enough now to stand a good chance of getting herself out of trouble should some terrible water-related accident happen; she can certainly swim well enough to enjoy all sorts of water sports etc., so we feel as though it’s not a bad time to stop the formal lessons as she would rather put the time and effort into the dancing stuff. It will be interesting to see how she gets on, after rather a long break from ballet lessons.

Yesterday I was mainly at home, did a few housework jobs and then spent most of the rest of the day chatting to various friends online. As you do And it was a fantastic day in Animal Crossing yesterday, as one of my wifi friends had fabulous turnip prices in her town, so I made over 3 million bells on the stalk market. Woo hoo! Oh, and we tried out the new Wagamama in town at lunchtime, which was great, liked it a lot Although I must practice with chopsticks – I stupidly ordered one of the soup/noodle dishes and then had trouble eating it! Tasted great but I felt very clumsy and messy while I was eating! Swimming run was long and tedious as usual, so I must admit I’ll be glad to make some changes there for next term.

And today is mainly a day at work, although I’m popping into town first thing … and then at some point I must find time to pack a bag as I’m taking Abbie & Joe with me to visit Merry et al for the weekend – it’s a non-pupil day on Monday so we have an extra day this weekend. We’re really looking forward to that Meanwhile Steve & Anna are staying here as Anna has a concert and an audition to go to.

So that’s us up to date I think … not much more to add. Oh, apart from that my brain is now old, tired, and 32! I had a bad day, okay?!