just another morning here

Is it just me, or has everyone been getting loads of blog-spam recently? I must have deleted a good 300 emails/spam comments over the past couple of days!

Anyway, quick blog although I have nothing much to say – it has been a day for making lists here, but nothing quite on the scale of Helen’s! So I feel organised, even if it is only that pseudo ‘revision timetable’ type of organised. Perhaps I’m the only one who spent more time making revision timetables than actually revising for any of the exams I’ve ever taken but I’m sure you know what I mean!

We’ve had Little-Neighbour-Mollie round to play, done some gaming, played Tantrix some more, and also made mince pies together. Too many of them have been eaten already though!

Love this one, too – captured the moment just after I caught Joe’s fingers with the rolling pin – he suddenly stopped being enthusiastic, let go of the rolling pin to poke the pastry, and I didn’t realise in time so rolled his fingers fairly hard – ouch!

He has recovered, I’m pleased to say

We’re vegging out with a Sunday afternoon film now, afterwards planning to hang our Jesse tree decoration for today and read the story of Daniel while making soup for tea, before heading out for a carol service at church.

It definitely feels Christmassy here now, as we are post-birthday Cake of the month arrived from our friend Maria today which looks lovely – we are going to ice it though, so that will be a fun job for next week Very disappointed to have got to the end of that particular present!

Yesterday was a lovely day; Steve insisted on paying for a babysitter so that we could finish our Christmas shopping together. I maintain we could have done it online in half the time but he wanted the whole experience, took me out for lunch as well, which was really nice. The children had a fab time with Cat here too, she is their favourite babysitter – shame (for us) that she’s off to Romania for four months in the New Year!

Have caught up (again) on the Jesse tree – we read the prophecy from Micah about Bethlehem (yesterday’s reading) and today’s focus was on Esther, so we watched the Veggie Tales version together

This morning we had the last Stage by Stage/violin lesson run of the year, then came home to do some tidying up and housework before this afternoon’s Young Strings carol concert.

The less said about that, the better – Josiah was a complete nightmare, behaving like a spoilt brat the whole way through, so I think Anna did okay but I couldn’t really tell as I was just trying to keep him under control As a result I’m feeling rather annoyed with him and have thrown him in the bath just to get some space! Now playing the ‘I’m not listening’ game to all the noise that’s coming from upstairs, tell me it’s not only me who does that?! Still, some pizza and Saturday night TV should sort me out

Josiah today announced that he was selling 20 pieces of Peace and Quiet for 20p, which I thought was quite a bargain! At the time, Anna was moaning that all she wanted was a little bit of Peace and Quiet for her birthday, which I reckon we can possibly stretch to, especially at Joe’s prices

We had a moment of peace and quiet here this afternoon, for all of 20 seconds, when all three of them were working on some maths workbooks. Anna had gone completely blank on subtraction with borrowing so we reviewed that with base ten blocks to help us. She then went on to do some translation work with the geoboard. Abbie did some adding and subtracting with 9 and 11, supposedly using strategies of 10+/- 1, and she seemed perfectly happy with that. Josiah’s page was on ordering numbers, which he could do standing on his head, but the writing numbers practice was good for him.

Other than that, and the Jesse tree stuff for today (the story of Jonah), and we got ahead for tomorrow as well (Isaiah 11) as we know we won’t have time tomorrow, we’ve not done much. The usual music practice first thing, which I really must give up blogging about as it seems to happen fairly naturally on days when I’m at home. Abbie wrote herself a shopping list for her birthday tea (which was very imaginative on the spelling front) so we shopped for that.

Now I’m off to bake a birthday cake – then Joe has his music lesson, a friend is coming round after work to swap Christmas presents because he’s off to Canada at the end of the week, then more friends round this evening for Film Night – watching Hotel Rwanda (reviews on imdb, Movie Gazette, and The Greatest Trick.

edited to add this bit:
I had an absolute blast sitting in on Josiah’s music lesson today, something that I occasionally do but not always. He’s missed it the past couple of weeks but made up for it today, he was on top form. Their teacher (who is lovely) had made them a little party table with food etc., and all their activities had a Christmassy theme today, which for some reason Joe just loved. She was playing requests on her violin and he asked for ‘The 12 days of Christmas’, and proceeded to sing heartily the whole way through. His singing voice is actually really good, for a 4yo he seems to have pretty good pitch.

They then did all their little listening and rhythm games with festive music as well, which all the kids loved. My camera is proving itself to be completely rubbish in low light but I’m adding this photo anyway:

It just made me smile so much to see him enjoying himself, with friends and music

Oh, and on family matters – today I am hugely jealous of my sister who has not one but two new kittens, and I must say Happy Birthday to my step-mum Lorraine for today as well

There really hasn’t been much going on here hence the lack of blogging, but when your mother-in-law comes round to complain about it, you know you have to Although in order to blog about what we’ve been up to we might actually have to do something! We are still recovering from last week’s late nights, and the children had another really late night on Sunday too, so there have been a couple of very lazy starts the past couple of days!

On Sunday I spent most of the day shopping and cooking for a Christmas meal that I hosted for our home ed group – should have been a good party but numbers dwindled during the day so it ended up being a select few, and was a lovely evening. Good thing we all like leftover turkey here, though

Yesterday passed in a bit of a blur, the kids and I spent the morning at the garage for one reason and another, and the afternoon at the swimming pool. We did some maths workbook pages while at the garage, although everyone’s heads seemed to be a bit fuzzy (all apart from Josiah’s, he is offering me random 99+99=198 type sums from his head at the moment, not sure where they’re all coming from, but there we go!).

Between swimming lessons we caught up completely with our Jesse tree stuff, coloured all the pictures and read lots of Old Testament stories, so that was nice. Today’s story was from 1 Kings 18, where Elijah calls on God and God sends fire onto his (completely soaking wet) altar. Weird when juxtaposed against the very different backdrop of the current fire situation in Hertfordshire.

Tree so far looks like this – I’m thinking we might need another branch!

Still have loads to do in order to be ready for Christmas and someone around here is getting very excited about her birthday, too. So less blogging, more action is needed round here. Of course if I hadn’t got caught up in Nintendo Wifi excitement myself I might get a lot more done! Christmas tree still looks fantastic and I love it