just another morning here

My half term is always too short. The children, jammy things, have two weeks, so are revelling in their second week off while normal people are back at school.

We didn’t do much during the week, but it was nice to have a break. On Monday it chucked with rain all day, so it didn’t really matter that I worked during the day, at school. Josiah chose to come with me and finished off a fair bit of homework that he’d left during the week before half term. We left the girls here supposedly to do homework, but I don’t think they were very productive. Fitted in some haircuts at lunchtime too.

Tuesday started early at the dentist’s, then Josiah had a laserquest birthday party to go to. I worked a bit more at school, and took the girls and their homework with me this time! In the afternoon I collected Joe from the party for a violin lesson, then deposited him back at the party again! We went out to see the Sound of Music in Exmouth with Abbie plus a friend in the evening; Anna was playing cello in the pit orchestra, and a couple of people that we know through orchestra were in the production, so that was an enjoyable evening.

Wednesday was cupboard-sorting day; the rest of the family had been promised dinner out if they helped me sort the cupboard in my classroom. It was in a terrible state, after not really having been sorted well when I ‘moved in’, and having had a year of people chucking things back in it quickly and not necessarily tidily (I’m the worst culprit!) so it desperately needed doing. Now it is very tidy and I am very proud of it, no longer will I be throwing things into it willy nilly! We went out for Chinese down the road before the girls went off to Panto rehearsal.

On Thursday I caught up with a friend and her lovely baby; the children slept in! We took Suzie to the vet to get weighed … made an appointment for the all important spaying/chipping, too – Suzie is desperate to get outside a bit more so she will be very pleased when we can let her go. She is quite a lovely cat and often waits on the lounge windowsill for us to get home, etc – we all love her to bits
I digress. Thursday afternoon was yet more sorting out; this time sorting out boxes and boxes of ECO’s music at Richard’s house. Anna had another evening playing in Exmouth after that.

Friday was about the only nice day weatherwise, and we had to spend it driving Anna and a friend to Harrow House in Swanage for a SWMS residential. When we got home we lazed around for a bit, and then in the evening we went out for a nightcache, which was fun as usual. We met another cacher and his dog at the start of the trail and did the whole thing together. Hot chocolate and an early night after that.

On Saturday we had orchestra as usual. In the afternoon we carved our pumpkin. Not sure whose idea it was to make it into a Cyberman but it became a bit of a serious project, with heated discussions about how best to do it! Steve ended up in charge and went for the simplistic approach – it turned out fairly well

I was just concerned about getting as much flesh out of it as possible, for pumpkin pancakes (they were delicious) and pumpkin pies as well! Then Abbie went off to a party at a friend’s house, and I helped Josiah to pack.

Sunday morning started early – we had to take Josiah to Plymouth for 7am to catch a ferry for his French trip. He’s gone to Chateau de la Baudonierre with around 60 other children from his school. Haven’t heard a dicky bird so far – no news is good news though! The rest of Sunday was spent with Abbie after we picked her up from her friend’s house. We ended up having lunch at BSRS and then also ended up agreeing to her having an early birthday present in the form of a three day course this week. Not entirely sure how that happened! Anna came home in the evening having had a fabulous time at her residential, but I haven’t seen her since …

And then it was back to school for me today. The girls had most of the day at home before going over to/out with friends for Halloween activities. The rest of their week will be pretty much taken up at the stables (Abbie) and with maths revision and music practice (Anna). Josiah will be back on Saturday

Half term seemed all too brief, and we were all right back to the busyness of life (which really does seem to be like an unstoppable rollercoaster sometimes!) this week. Nice to see the kids at my school again though – I do enjoy my job

Choir at Abbie’s school (which Anna also attends) started again, so another activity to add into the mix. Plus, annoyingly, the little path between Anna’s school and my school is blocked by drain-works at the moment so our little arrangements for instrument care have had to change – sad that I’m bothered about these things but they all make a difference to general logistics!! There were changes in evensong timetable this week too so that threw us as well! Still, we got to the end of the week, and on the spur of the moment decided to take fish’n'chips over to Steve’s parents on Friday night which was lovely

Saturday dawned bright and early with a little hoo-ha over uniform for Joe’s choir practice – they don’t usually wear uniform for Saturday morning practice but they were laying Remembrance Day wreaths so uniform was a good idea, but we didn’t realise until literally the last minute! Luckily our friends round the corner are far more with it about church timetables than we are so they keep us on the straight and narrow with regard to these sorts of things! I had clocked Remembrance Sunday, of course, but was unprepared for events a day beforehand!

The rest of Saturday was taken up with orchestra rehearsals, housework/jobs session (definitely a ‘quick lick and promise’ style housework this weekend!) while cooking dinner (cooked lunch as we knew we wouldn’t have time for tea!) then a concert at the cathedral for Josiah, then he went off to Grandma’s for the night while Steve and I took the girls to their Youth Orchestra concert.
Abbie was playing percussion in the concert, after only rehearsing with the percussion section since the beginning of term, so she was quite nervous, but we only noticed a couple of obvious errors (the rest were well hidden, lol!).
All good fun but pretty tiring – though *really* nice to have Steve with us for a change

Today has been lovely. We had a relaxed morning (caught up with last night’s X-Factor in bed this morning!), bacon & egg butties, then church for me; Steve collected Josiah, then we met up back at home. The girls stayed here this afternoon and ended up on the computer pretty much all afternoon (I would but I know who they take after so I can’t really say anything!). Anna took a break to do some theory work as her G5 exam is on Wednesday. We’ve told her that if she doesn’t pass she has to pay for a re-take! It’s about the only exam that I really don’t care how she does as long as she passes!

Steve, Josiah and I took the Hymer down to the coast for the afternoon. We sat on Paignton seafront and ate a picnic, then walked along the pier and the beach Shockingly, Josiah managed to go all the way down to the sea and NOT get soaking wet!!

After that we had a very exciting drive down to Cockington Country Park, on the hunt for a geocache (of course). I’d asked a friend whether it would be ok for the Hymer to drive there and he assured me that it would be, but we were breathing in and hoping we didn’t meet anything all the way there!! It was Very Tight. Steve did some pretty impressive driving and then parking manouevres, I must admit.
And we found the cache, which was a fab hide, although not quite as hard as I’d been expecting

Home for slow cooker dinner, glass of red wine, and laundry sorting plus a couple more preparations for the week ahead before sitting down for the X Factor results. I wonder if I should start voting, or perhaps just stop watching

Finally, I don’t have any pumpkin left after using the last of ours for pumpkin pie this week, but if I did, I would be baking these Chocolate Peanut butter pumpkin muffins – saw them on my friend’s blog and they look delicious – perhaps even worth getting another pumpkin for – but only once we’ve finished the existing pumpkin pie! At least if the link is here I’ll be able to find it again when we get another pumpkin in a veg box.

Now it must be time for bed, as I’ve found myself watching some bloke on tv hypnotising a lobster … but at least that gives me a random blog post title …

Today had to be pumpkin day. The girls are going to a party tomorrow night where there is a pumpkin carving competition, so they wanted to join in – and we won’t have time for everything tomorrow. Joe carved one too – so I had three lots of pumpkin innards to use up (and Abbie’s was a BIG pumpkin!).

So far we have made:
Pumpkin Pie – we used this recipe but having tasted it, half a cup of sugar would have done the job, it’s way too sweet!

Pumpkin Cake – this recipe looks fabulous, although I haven’t actually tasted it yet. This recipe, meanwhile, tastes ok, but wouldn’t come out of the tin in one piece so NIL POINTS for that one.

Tomorrow will be soup and scones, and I guarantee I will still have a 2l box full of pumpkin flesh to go!

It’s been a nice day, just pootling about with the kids, and I didn’t get enough days like this in the week, could totally have another week off … ah well.

Just so I don’t forget … Josiah did lots today, or it felt like it to me anyway …

Maths and music theory workbooks first thing, plus violin practice.

Shopping at Tescos for a change because they kindly sent me some ‘we have a new store so we’ll give you loads of money off’ vouchers!

Somehow ended up talking about percentages and built on that over lunch with Steve. Joe’s quite happily dealing with 200%, 100%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 20% and even 15% of nice round numbers. A good start – might get those fraction equivalence rods out to play with later in the week.

First piano lesson – he’s just mucking around on the drums and piano at lunchtime and suddenly he decides he’d like to learn piano as well 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.

Helped me to clean out the fish tank thoroughly, washed all the gravel etc. Digger the fish looks much happier already.

Made a scale model of the solar system, will take photo soon. Joe says it’s not a model because it’s flat not solid, so it’s a diagram really, I suppose he’s right. His maths this morning was measuring in centimetres, and we did lots of measuring for the solar system thing too so all good practice.

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.