just another morning here

Just got embroiled in upgrading to WP2.6, which took far too long and broke too many plugins for my liking. Still, they are all fixed now, but I have a chronic headache, not helped by the events of the night.

We had a pleasant enough evening at Jools Holland – well, Jools was great, and 4/5 of us really enjoyed it. Abbie had decided she felt ill so was hiding under a blanket. We ignored her thinking she was making a mountain out of a molehill but then she spent the night throwing up so perhaps she wasn’t just making a fuss after all

Anyway here are some photos mainly from before Abbie started feeling dodgy.

Think we are going to be taking it very easy today – she’s still being sick and the rest of us were all awake throughout the night so feeling kind of rough as well

More pictures on my photostream but this is my favourite. I think I’m going to kidnap Steve’s camera, it’s better than mine

Lovely day so far here, brunch, then we went out to dodge showers at Columbjohn, which is a little hamlet on the edge of the National Trust land at Killerton. Only got a bit wet, when the sun came out it was beautifully warm. Came home with a few photos and a few cups of blackberries Annoyingly we had to leave early because Joe needed the toilet (and not just a wee ). Wish we could have stayed longer, as the girls wanted to paddle in the stream and do some drawing while we were there.

Anna’s gone off to Stagecoach now, and the rest of us are going to do music practise, a bit of tidying up, folding washing, and watch the Grand Prix

The four biggest girls practised cartwheels, handstands etc., on the beautiful Killerton lawn, while Joe and Ammi can just be seen in the distance, running races … this was after a brief meetup with Jules and some of the girls taking part in a storytelling trail. A perfect day indeed

Anna nicked the camera and I’ve found it full of a study on Josie – both my girls are rather taken with her, and understandably so

It was a gorgeous afternoon. Almost sad to be going on holiday at the weekend, when we have Devon and friends here!

This evening have got kids through baths and hairwashes, polished shoes, and got clothes ready, hoping to avoid the teenage style ‘but I can’t wear *that* with *those* shoes’ strops from Anna in the morning.

I admit to being slightly stressed out and I may have raised my voice once or twice tonight. Noticed that Anna had tidied up her room by stuffing all her clothes into drawers in a most higgledy piggledy fashion, and commented that she was a nightmare. ‘No, I’m just a normal eight year old girl, living with a stressed out mother and a deaf father’, came the retort. She’s not far wrong; as well as having got it spot on in my case, Steve has a propensity for taking at least ten seconds to even register that someone’s speaking to him, giving the impression that he is, in fact, stone deaf. A trait which he demonstrated admirably at dinnertime this evening.

Have procrastinated everything I possibly can this evening, put it all off, and now having early night instead, hoping that will make me super-efficient tomorrow afternoon/evening.