just another morning here

I have spent far too much time in a car today. Going to blog backwards here … 3hr towing lesson this afternoon. Manically hoping that if I were that awful and doomed to fail, the instructor wouldn’t be letting me sit the test on Wednesday but I’m not really that sure. Still, apparently these photos are going to end up on his website (towing page apparently under reconstruction at the moment). And I can highly recommend Taylor Made Driving, although if, after Wednesday, I never have to sit next to Mr Taylor in a car again, I will be very happy!

Before that I was driving home from Birmingham, where I spent a happy night escaping from reality with one of my best and oldest friends, we saw Nanci Griffith in concert (loads of nostalgia there as we used to spend hours listening to her earlier stuff in our teenage angst years together), and chatted until the early hours in the basic but perfectly adequate Etap hotel. It was a great night, and we will have to do something similar again next year. Perhaps a whole weekend rather than just a fleeting night!

Going back even further then. Over the weekend we had Caitlin and Riona with us, their company was pleasant as always even if it did make things somewhat messier and noisier than average (but only a little ). On Friday night we watched Superman Returns, which Steve and I really enjoyed. Nods to the original films in all the right places!

We did not very much on Saturday other than a picnic lunch in the park; then in the evening went down to a campsite near Plymouth where our friends Stuart and Liz were camping. The children had a swim in the pool, we all had a delicious Cadac (still want one of those) meal, lots of chatting/playing, etc.

Sunday had a slow start; Anna went off to look after Robyn for the day – I hope Aunty Emma found it as useful as we did! Then in the afternoon I set off for Birmingham. On the way I had a sub-mission to pick up the 3/4 size cello that I bought on ebay last week, found the house easily enough, was very worried that it might not be a 3/4 size (it is though – only a couple of inches different to the 1/2 size). It sounds much much nicer than Anna’s 1/2 size one – it’s old and a bit battered but that has obviously added to the tone of the instrument. Now if she can just learn the newly spaced fingering she’ll be well away.

Back to today then, oh and some random home ed from Friday, too. When I got home I found Josiah had been doing lots of map stuff with Steve; discussing directions and making compasses, and drawing maps to find ‘treasure’ on ‘Downstairs Island’. He’d obviously had lots of fun doing it. Friday’s education was helping the plumber install a new tap in the kitchen, the old one had been dripping since February, and I finally got annoyed enough to do something about it!

There, up to date. Tomorrow has another towing lesson in it, the last before my test. I am incredibly stressed out by the whole thing, the injustice of it all still annoys me immensely. However, as an aside but on the same subject, Steve and I have a small bet on. He thinks that he can pass the towing test without any tuition, because he’s such a great (and humble ) driver. So we are paying the aforementioned Mr Taylor of Taylor Made Driving an extra hour or so, to give Steve a mock test. This will cost us approximately the same as a good night out on the town, but give us far more entertainment value which will last a long time to come, whatever the outcome! Watch this space for results of both in due course

Oh, and just for a laugh, here is Josiah’s giant Balance (Sainsbury’s own Special K) flake. It was as big as his ear, which was hilarious, apparently!

It has been a really long but really lovely day. Got up early with the children and all music practices were done on time before Robyn arrived and the girls went off to school. Good start to the day there then

Joe, Robyn and I joined a home ed group trip to Overbeck’s today, a NT property on the South Devon coast – because it’s Devon it seemed close but it was more like driving to Bristol and back in a day, and some of the roads were interesting to say the least! Had a fab day, but I can’t be bothered to get my (very few) photos off the camera yet so look at Jo’s, here instead

The house and grounds were both fantastic, and we followed it all by going to the beach, and I felt bad for dragging kids off the cliffs at 4.30pm. Got back at 6.30pm and realised that the meeting I had was at 7pm not the usual 7.30pm, so rushed dinner and went out again.

Steve left early this morning and worked most of the day – then he has built a new porch roof and was here for the girls when they came home from school; Anna had cello lessons and I think Abbie went to play with Caitlin & Riona for a bit. He also managed to find dinner in the freezer and cooked it, timed perfectly for our return. And then cleared up and sorted the children out while I dashed out for the evening … so he definitely wins some brownie points today

We went to Budleigh Salterton today; had a lovely walk along the coast, then had lunch in the van and lazed around while the children played. Made us look forward to all the camping we have planned this summer.

Followed that by a trip to the bike shop just to see what bags they had there … didn’t buy one though!

After all that we went to Russ & Marg’s for the rest of the afternoon and tea, which was lovely. The children played Scrabble and Professor Fizzwiggle or whatever he’s called. Fizzwizzle!

Really don’t feel like blogging but having downloaded from the camera I suppose I might manage to put a few pictures together and come up with a blog post!

Josiah and I have had Robyn with us all week so we’ve kept busy which is good all round, it means Joe and I don’t annoy one another too much, Joe and Robyn annoy one another instead

Monday was shopping day, then we baked cookies, then just played at home. As usual breathed a sigh of relief when Anna got home as she is so great with Robyn! Mollie and Ruby came over too, and they all played with Robyn’s playdoh for hours

On Tuesday we went swimming in the morning, which was pretty fun although Joe just seemed out of place and huge in the little pool with a bunch of toddlers.

Swimming was enough to wipe Robyn out for the afternoon (mission accomplished!) so she slept and we played Zelda, then had Ruth round for a cup of tea before going on to the park then school to retrieve the big girls.

Anna had cello after school; the rest of us went to the park while she was there and I met an old friend, so it was nice to have someone to chat to (makes the park bearable!), and generally catch up with her and her family.

Wednesday‘s activity was home ed group at the park; Josiah made another new friend (hurrah) and Robyn enjoyed bimbling around the park too. Came home in time for Robyn to have a sleep, a little bit of Zelda (have been playing lots this week!), piano and recorder lessons, had tea, then went out for violin/Stage by Stage/Wind Group as usual. Appreciated the return of my chauffeur after two weeks doing that run without him

On Thursday we met up with our friend Becca to do something with her in celebration of her birthday. The weather didn’t look great so we ended up at Crealy – then it actually turned out to be a nice day! We played in the play areas, treated Becca (and ourselves) to a panini in the cafe, walked across the bridges to the lake where we fed the ducks, came back up and the children played in the sandpits for a while, then we rode the carousel and Becca even took Joe on the log flume, she was obviously feeling reckless

After that, swimming and ballet lessons and an early night, Steve and I were both tired, but it still felt very odd to be going upstairs past the kids’ rooms saying goodnight to them and them all still being awake when we went to bed – that’s just wrong, surely?!!

Today was County Show Day. We had a great day; Josiah took photos of everything he thought Steve would have liked to see, which was mainly cars. The highlight of our day was probably Andrei Burton (a top mountain bike trials rider) doing a display at the Cycle Exeter stand, he was amazing! Robyn loved all the animals, predictably. Oh, and our other fave stand was a science education one where there were all sorts of primary science type activities, as well as circus skills and a clown, we stayed there for a really long time, almost as long as the queue for the face painting

We spent far too much money on food and other rubbish and came home with far too many fluffy sticky advertising bugs, pens, and carrier bags. Still I guess at least the pens and carrier bags will come in handy. Prize for most useless giveaway must go to DVLA, who, in May, were giving away windscreen scrapers

Home to generally veg out and then Joe lost his first tooth. For some reason this makes me stupidly emotional, my baby losing his baby teeth. He is quite excited that the tooth fairy has gone out to play poker tonight, as the tooth fairy promised that if he won, he’d be in a good mood *and* have some money by the time he came home to look under people’s pillows!

Oh, and I almost forgot, Anna got a Thank You Certificate at school for passing a Librarian’s Test and therefore being awarded the honourable title of Library Assistant, complete with shiny badge