ooh, has it been two days again? I really am going to lose my t-shirt if I’m not careful 
Friday night’s bonfire party has to be the most scary thing I’ve been to since the Tar Barrels in Ottery St. Mary! Despite a very safe distance between fireworks and viewing balcony there were a couple of near misses including one fountain that shot very close to Steve’s ear. I took Josiah inside the house when he’d had enough and we half watched the rest of the fireworks inside, until the very last one, a rocket, got stuck on it’s stick and exploded at 3ft high rather than right up in the air. It made a massive bang and I just saw a huge flash, it scared me silly because both girls were still outside at the front of the patio, and I hadn’t really seen what happened, so I went rushing out in a mad panic. They, of course, thought that the last one was the best, but honestly, I had my heart in my mouth a number of times! No-one was hurt, anyway, and I guess it added to the excitement, but also made you realise how easily disastrous accidents can happen.
Saturday was swimming for all three children, Joe’s lesson went well again, thankfully … and then gymnastics for the girls later in the day. We finally dealt with the rest of our pumpkin stash – made pumpkin soup, and cooked the rest of the pumpkin flesh which I’ve frozen for use in the next few weeks, cleaned out the hamster, and I had a friend round for the evening for tea and chatting. Steve was farting around with bags of sand and a white sheet for most of dinner time, and then forced us all to watch the X Factor on the projector, while yelling ‘mind the wires!’ at anyone who went anywhere near it. Ho hum! 
This morning Anna had her first public performance on the cello. The Young Strings group that she is part of held a coffee morning so we all went along, plus Grandma & Grandpa, and Emma & Mollie from up the road. It was a nice relaxed affair with lots of cakes and the children just took turns to perform … we ended up staying till the end which was good because there were lots of cakes left over! Anna did really well, and it was nice to hear the other children playing as well. Josiah particularly sat still for ages watching – he is fixated on learning the ‘liovin’ when he is older, and he definitely enjoyed watching the older children play.
Once home we watched this week’s ‘A Different Life’, which was one of the 2-4 productions episodes. I happen to know that it was a difficult one to put together so I was quite surprised how well it turned out!! We’ve played some games together, eaten too much cake, and now the children have settled down to watch Microcosmos on DVD. They watched The Future is Wild earlier and it got them started on the bug theme, so it was a natural continuation
Ooh, just noticed that an ITV dramatisation of the Railway Children is on this afternoon, that might be nice. 3.55pm for anyone who sees this in time and might be interested. Anyway, I have a huge pile of paperwork that I really should be doing instead of blogging …
Got home around 9ish and I decided that was a good time for me to go to bed, along with the kids – still seething that I am quite so tired after last night’s election results. I was going to stay up and play some more Little Big Planet, which we got today – Josiah took over earlier and I really need to play the first few levels myself!