just another morning here

Spring (no snow here), hope, new life, the celebration of the crux of my faith, time with family and usually plenty of food and chocolate, makes for a good Easter!

We had a lovely day, from the hot cross buns and Grand Prix start to the morning, through church where Josiah did a short drama with his friend Billy as part of the service, and then a pleasant afternoon spent at Grandma & Grandpa’s house along with Steve’s sister and her family.

And home in time to watch the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which I’m really enjoying; it is totally doing justice to the book, in my opinion

It was Steve’s turn to work a couple of Bank Holidays so he’s been mainly at work this weekend, leaving the rest of us to enjoy ourselves, and we have

Yesterday we spent the day in town. Firstly we tried to take back a cello string that had snapped after a week. I was incredulous that the one music shop in town was closed, I mean, I know it’s a bank holiday but if it were my shop, I’d have kept it open. Anyway.

We wandered down through town, doing a bit of shopping in various places, and ended up at the Cathedral Green in time for a re-enactment of the Crucifixion. We hadn’t quite been spiritual enough to follow the whole Easter story as it had been acted out in various locations in town but it was good to be part of the finale. It was absolutely freezing; Anna commented that the guys up on the crosses next to Jesus really didn’t have to act much to look like they were in pain, and she was right!

After that we ended up in McDs for lunch , we met some friends there so that made it bearable. A bit more shopping afterwards and then I took the kids down to MakeArt and treated them to a session there – definitely lovely but definitely a bit on the pricey side too. They had a great time though, decorating some small animals with decoupage – and I had a nice cup of tea while they were doing it.

From there we went down to Ivonne‘s birthday party where we had some delicious cake and a Wii bowling game to celebrate. The kids were starting to get a bit hyper and annoying by this point, Steve was selling cars so he was late arriving and we left pretty much as soon as he got there!

Invited more friends over for a roast dinner and a showing of La Vie en Rose in the evening, and that was great – the food and the film, not to mention the company

Today has been fairly boring really; we went into town and got a new cello string, popped in to Sainsbury’s, did some music practices, some jobs around the house, Anna went to play with a friend who lives a half hour drive away so that took an hour out of the morning, the other two made a nice looking Easter cake, and they all did some Easter crafty stuff.

Joe had a friend to play in the afternoon, supposedly to practice a short drama they are doing at church tomorrow, but also just to play. Billy came bearing tadpoles for us which was very exciting (for me!). Sorted out guinea pigs both here and at friends’ while they’re away, dropped Billy off, picked Steve up, came home and cooked some dinner. Anna was dropped home and they all got into pyjamas to snuggle in front of Saturday night tv, which is nice, even if we have ended up in front of 2 different programmes!

Raided Steve’s camera for a few last photos, I promise this is it now.
A few more from Easter Sunday:

And then some from when we gave Caleb and Elodie their birthday pressies. Their birthdays are both in May so we’d been organised, and then decided we’d like to see them open them – so glad we did as the presents went down really well and they both spent the whole day in their dressing up clothes

We normally only get together with this branch of our family all together at special occasions like Christmas, so it does sort of feel like an elongated version of that, rather than any other time of year!

Of course Easter is a special occasion as well. We celebrated yesterday together – we had an egg hunt in the courtyard here, with chocolate eggs as well as plastic ones with clues to the Easter story inside (which my friend Liz had sent – and I have to specially thank her as everyone here appreciated it, it worked really well ). After hunting we went indoors and sat round the table to look at the Easter story clues, and then Dad read the Bible and we all tried to sing a hymn that only three of us could remember! (think Steve has some amusing photos of that but he’s not as sad as me so you won’t see those till we get home).

Dad and Lorraine went off to church leaving the rest of us to muck around here – Mark cooked a stunning roast beef dinner on the Aga (which none of us are used to so it was more by luck than judgement!).

After dinner we went on a long walk from the farmhouse to Belstone Tor – didn’t quite make it to the very top before turning round to come back. Stopped for a drink in the pub at Belstone and then walked home again. Took us 3.5 hours altogether and Elodie walked most of the way too which was very impressive! Played Trivial Pursuit in the evening. In fact we’ve played board games most evenings which has been a highlight of the week for us so far.

Today has been more mellow, lots of games/reading … some people went to Castle Drogo while others went swimming. I have held onto my family Nurtz (a fast card game, think it has other names but we always called it Nurtz) champion title for today at least, and there is a very serious Scrabble game underway as I write, as well as a less serious Buzz game going on too.