Strictly speaking, this was Sunday’s performance, but it’s taken me until Monday to get the video online.
These are my three favourite musicians in the whole wide world, doing their thing at their piano teacher’s concert yesterday.
Haven’t felt like blogging really - as usual when the girls go back to school it takes Joe and I a few days to adjust, and I don’t want to speak too soon, but today’s been ok. Wondering if the new star chart in the kitchen has helped at all - probably, as he had done his workbooks, piano practice, and brought us a cup of tea in bed all before 7.30am! The kitchen was a complete tip but we’ll gloss over that 
After saying goodbye to the girls we did his violin practice which went well for once. It’s been a long summer without seeing his teacher and it’s been hard to wind back up into regular decent practice (everyone, not just Joe!), but today he managed great posture/bow hold, as well as actually remembering his pieces, hurrah.
Then we started putting his Romans lapbook together, which involved me doing lots of cutting out and Josiah doing lots of sticking. Joe chose to complete a little flap thingy on Romulus and Remus, so he drew a picture of them as babies, and then dictated a very brief version of the story to me (there was no way on earth that he’d have been able to write it out, so better to go for the CM dictation approach than have a frustrated writer on my hands).
He played outside for a bit, got the guinea pigs out, nearly lost one of them in the garden but we managed to catch it again! Then played with a lego creation for a while, before Steve came home from lunch.
After lunch I had a lovely chat on the phone with my friend Liz, and then I taught Joe how to play San Juan. This took a long time but was worthwhile as it’s a game I actually like playing! I am so so bored of most of our board games, I really need some other new games that are enjoyable for adults as well as children. Literally the only games I really like playing are Yahtzee and Mastermind/Mindbender, everything else makes me groan when he suggests them. So we went off to PlayMerrily and had a look there - we like a look of a few of the games 
By the time we’d done that the girls were home, ravenous despite having had school dinners, and Laura turned up for piano lessons. Tonight it’s Stage by Stage and Wind Group so a busy evening ahead.
We’re back down to earth with a bump here. Last week my sister was staying, which was really nice, but we didn’t get an awful lot done as we were still in definite holiday mode! We did do a couple of nice things including a mooch around town to show her the sights (or at least the good coffee shops!), church followed by a BBQ with friends on Sunday, a trip to Dartington Crystal (because we’d won free tickets) on Monday, and a fair bit of dossing around at home.
Yesterday we had Caitlin and Riona with us, took Esther back to the station early afternoon, and then the new term began with Anna’s first cello lesson later on in the afternoon. Incidentally, she passed her Grade 4 cello (108), don’t think I ever blogged that. And Abbie passed both the Grade 1s (piano 114 & recorder 107) that she took at the same time.
In the evening the girls both sharpened all their pencils and got their uniforms ready, and I think they even managed an early night - certainly they were in bed by the time I got home from an aborted Miscarriage Support Group meeting (forgot the keys, oops. still saw one person though and had a good chat on the stairs instead!).
Today the girls were back at school, and obviously pleased about it as they were both up and ready way earlier than necessary!
Josiah and I have had a relatively good home-ed day too. He did a couple of workbook pages from a music and a maths book, just to try and get back into the swing of doing something each day. He seems to have forgotten how to write all his numbers!
Then we did his music practices together, then made a picnic while signing up for Education City again, in order that I don’t feel too guilty about hours spent in the office, our next destination. By the way, does anyone still have a valid ‘refer a friend’ code that I could use when I actually have to sign up properly in 10 days’ time? Steve and I had a business meeting to attend together so Josiah amused himself with Education City on the computer at work while we did that.
The plan after that was to head to Home Ed group, which I assumed would have started back today, but the park was empty. Joe was a bit disappointed - I really should have checked beforehand as I probably had the info in an email somewhere. Ah well, there’s always next week. We had our lunch in the park anyway, and it gave us the chance to have a good chat about a couple of goals for home ed, which was good. Joe’s decided he’d like to try making a lapbook about the Romans, so that gives us something projecty to do alongside basic workbook things. He was only 18 months old when the girls did their first ever home ed project on the Romans so I don’t suppose he can remember much about it - in fact thinking about it, they did it with Aunty Jacky and I took him out to the park while she was there, so I can’t remember much either!
Anyway, then we headed back to the garage to get a few more things sorted; we’ve got a stand in the local shopping centre’s ‘Motor Show’ next weekend so there are some extra things that need doing for that.
Now we’re home for piano lessons. Still chasing my tail with lots of paperwork to catch up on so better stop blogging and get on with it!
After receiving this tiny (it’s about 4cm high and 12cm long) but beautifully made card, I had yet another breakfast in bed, all courtesy of my favourite middle child
We spent the rest of the day together in the park and at home … the concert was very entertaining, if a little haphazard in places!
Just so I don’t forget … Josiah did lots today, or it felt like it to me anyway …
Quite easy actually, as we’ve been doing so much theory already it’s just a case of getting his fingers to learn to do something different. He was pretty good at it! Will be interesting to see connections being made across both the instruments, iyswim.In addition to facilitating all of that, I made pumpkin scones (very yummy) and pizza for tea; Anna had a friend round after school and along with Abbie they did lots of drawing, playing, got the hamster out for another run around the bedroom … and then danced and sang very loudly to the sound of Motion in the Ocean.
And there goes another week! We’ve had Robyn with us again this week after a long break for Christmas so that’s been nice - it is really interesting to watch the dynamics between Josiah, Robyn and I at different points in our time together!
Joe, Robyn and I spent some time at Crealy on Thursday, and some time with friends on Friday, as well as all the other usual stuff that goes on around here. Haven’t got around to reading our library books this week so we must make some more time for reading next week. Anna’s enjoying reading this trilogy though, and has spent a fair bit of time in bed with her book!
I’ve cooked lots of soup from my New Covent Garden recipe books this week, and we’ve done some baking too - breaking my new year’s resolutions there but I was desperate for a chocolate hit, so I had to make cake! The next day I made sure that Abbie took what was left to share at her Wind Group, so that I couldn’t eat it
The weekend has been quiet really - we have spent lots of time in the car together one way or another so there has been a fair bit of talking (and singing, and reciting Psalty lyrics, much to Steve’s disgust ) together which I’ve appreciated. Sometimes we can get through a week and realise that we’ve hardly seen each other (the whole family, I mean), so it’s been nice to have some family time. We ended up all going to Sainsbury’s together (oh yes, we know how to live the high life!) and watching films/Saturday night tv together too, which just felt cosy and comfortable, just how I like Saturday nights to be
Today we spent the day with Steve’s parents which was great, we haven’t been there for ages as they’ve been having building work done, which is finally nearly finished! Emma and I popped down to Torquay for a bit of a giggle at the FXFactor (and yes, I told them about the grammatical error on the front page of that site but they didn’t really want to know ) auditions that Em decided to go for - she got through! It was almost exciting
Joe and Anna played their Bach Minuet together for the first time and it sounded lovely. Well, they had to stop at every repeat sign as the first time Joe missed the timing and the second time Anna hadn’t realised there even was a repeat at the end (doh), quite funny to hear Josiah telling her about the music when usually she knows more than he does about stuff like that. Anyway (don’t know how long this will last) they’ve agreed to practice together every day so that they can get it even better together