just another morning here

Plus a fish, an audition, and some nice meals out with friends, but they didn’t begin with C so couldn’t fit them into the title!

So, this weekend Steve upped and left us all at 5am on Saturday; he has spent the weekend on one of his hill climb jaunts – but some of the rest of us had things on and couldn’t be bothered to be to-ing and fro-ing from Cornwall so we didn’t go. He’s still not home as I write this, I imagine he will be exhausted, having towed his Subaru and slept in the back of the Audi, never mind the motor racing itself, so I may have to update this later if there are any photos or anything worthy of mention!

Saturday was really chilled and lovely here. Anna has been working on a project all weekend – one she was given at half term I think, but it’s due in on Monday and she’d hardly done any of it before now! So that’s been bubbling away in the background all weekend; Abbie and I have helped her with a few little bits of it, too.

We went to Tesco and Pets at Home first thing to pick up a few necessary bits – ended up with some unnecessary ones as well when Josiah decided to spend his birthday money on a new fish tank and another fish to keep Digger company. Came home and started re-arranging the kitchen to accommodate said fish tank, although I might yet move it, as I’m not sure the fish will like being on top of the sideboard directly above the washing machine. On top of the fridge is probably better, but we’ll see. I’ve done all the washing this weekend already in any case!

Josiah was picked up by some friends for a playdate at their house, and we arranged to meet up later on for a walk and geocache hunt … always like to introduce more of my friends to caching as Steve and I don’t ever seem to have the time (or the inclination when we have the time!). Thought it was a bit trickier than the description suggested, especially as the GPS pointed us to the wrong side of the river to start with! Found it eventually though – an empty box! Perfectly big enough for some swaps but there was nothing there, so we put a few little bits and bobs into it for the next visitors to find

Came home from there and after another hour’s project work for Anna, we headed down to Rog & Ruth’s for a BBQ with them and some other friends, so that was really nice. Staggered home and caught up with Saturday night tv

On Sunday we started early with the China project again. It annoyed me in the end, as there was so much that they were supposed to include that it was a sketchy overview, rather than a detailed study of any particular bit – I would have preferred her to be able to choose a particular focus rather than try to cover everything. Ho hum. I helped a fair bit to get it finished so that we still had a little bit of weekend left!

We didn’t make it to church because we were taking Anna down to some auditions, for the Northcott Theatre pantomime children’s chorus. Not sure what the standard is or whether she stands a chance of getting in, I guess time will tell! They have said they will let us know this week. While she was there we walked along the river for a geocache

Some friends invited us for lunch which was fab, we enjoyed our time with them, and the delicious roast dinner Steve is probably going to come home starving but I’m not cooking anything later!

We came home and have tidied up, put washing away, sorted out, and are now lazing around watching tv and waiting for Steve to get back.

Joe was so excited this morning when he remembered he was getting a fish today. He chose the ‘orangest’ one And he’s called Digger because diggers are orange.

And apparently, if I’m going to kill it I have to do it within 7 days to get a free replacement … !!

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