just another morning here

Very pleased to have sneaked in on this one due to virtue of having been home educating when we booked it, and then sharing a room meaning that our places would be harder to fill; we had a fantastic time. I love the Borders anyway, they hold some nostalgia and memories for me from the year we lived there, and also it’s just a generally beautiful place to be.

Despite the usual Melrose illness and the fact that lots of people left early as a result, which was sad, we still had a great week. We enjoyed our time in the hostel and out of it – I hardly saw the children as they were having such fun socialising, and I had a lovely time with friends too. Would have been even better if people hadn’t started being ill/going home on my birthday, but there we are, such is life.

My three all enjoyed Helen’s music workshop, and the girls loved Matt’s computer game one too. Josiah still maintains that ‘he has enough computer games already so why would he want to make a new one?’, and nothing will persuade him otherwise! Our trip to Dynamic Earth was good, and we all had fun joining in on a couple of geocache trails. All very educational I’m sure, just to justify the week out of school!

My full set of photos is here, more beautiful ones of Em’s are here, and the Beans’ are here … maybe more to come when flickred.

Josiah and I got home late last night. We had a fantastic week away in Melrose, followed by a weekend in Sheffield for a friend’s wedding, which was a great day as well. I hardly took any photos, as everywhere I went there were other people taking (probably better) pictures than me, so I didn’t bother, I’ll add links as and when people flickr them!

Briefly, we enjoyed:

seeing/meeting friends both old and new

Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh on Wednesday

Nostalgic trip round the Borders visiting friends and seeing our old house on Thursday

All the lovely food

Lots of DSing (yes, both of us, Joe was as bad as me!)

and I’m sure there was more, but I can’t remember it now.

There was lots (and lots) of Fimo craft going on, which ended up annoying me as I could never get inspired and also couldn’t stand seeing small children muck up the colours, not to mention welding bits of uncooked fimo to the table, chairs, and floor – aargh! But it was fun nevertheless I enjoyed the week almost as much as the first Melrose camp back in 2004 I think. It was very strange not to have the girls there but they seem to have had a good week at home with Steve too.

A few snaps of us from Melrose courtesy of the Beans :

We spent a very relaxing night in the Travelodge in Sheffield, I was obviously just tired enough not to notice or care about the usual things that annoy me about (a) Travelodges and (b) Little Chefs!

Kirsty and James’ wedding was also a fabulous day, lovely to see them get married and enjoy their day, and great to see so many of our friends there too.

The drive home was easy and the girls were still up when we got back so that was nice, they looked as if they had missed me, and now I’m hoping they will have missed me enough to think of bringing me breakfast in bed!

… and as long as I don’t get held up and then the ovens are working properly, dinner should be okay, all is chopped and ready to cook! Managed to gather everything together and pack today as well as have a nice time with the children doing various things along the way. Well, I’ve probably forgotten something but never mind. OH yes, it does matter – the wine! I’ll go and pack it now!!

Feels really weird to be just taking Josiah to a home ed camp rather than all three children, but the girls are looking forward to organising Steve/the household while we’re away