just another morning here

Or: I found some photos on the camera so thought I’d better add a blog post about them!

Last week Abbie went on a kayaking course down at Haven Banks, along with her friend Riona. They really enjoyed themselves, and finished up by achieving the vast majority of level 5 of the Paddle Power Passport. I imagine they may well go on and do the higher levels another year.

Joe and I went down for a walk along the river on their last day and watched them paddling back then finishing off a few bits of their award.

I didn’t take any photos of our day at Transform last week but that was lovely too … no decent photos of the cat this week either so the weekly update is a rubbish iPhone photo but it is quite funny. She is currently trying to sabotage my efforts at working, too!

I hope we’ve managed to recharge some batteries over the weekend; Abbie and Josiah have had a restful time, at least. Friday was a day off for Steve and I, and we had a pleasant day doing some work things together, but also faffing around with putting things on shelves, deciding what else to put on shelves, and driving around the city a lot. On Friday night the children all went to their kids’ club and Steve & I snatched dinner out at our favourite restaurant, fabulous value at that time of night.

On Saturday Anna and I went off to orchestra, the others stayed behind and didn’t do very much at all. Well, Steve fitted a racing harness into his Silly Car, and got the bikes ready for the afternoon, but the kids didn’t do anything more than watch tv and play games!

After lunch we went out for a walk/bike ride on the Quay which was windy but lots of fun.

Anna went for a sleepover with Caitlin in the evening; the rest of us had dinner and watched DVDs.

Today the girls and I went to church while Steve and Joe went to Sainsbury’s. Anna and Abbie got certificates for their bible-book-order learning which they are very proud of. Josiah bought some much-needed pyjamas in Sainsbury’s and liked them so much that he changed into them.

We met up at home and walked through the park, kicking and chucking leaves around on the way, for lunch with an elderly friend from church who cooks the most fantastic roast dinners. Had a lovely time with him, he has loads of interesting things around the house from carnivorous plants to insect collections, as well as plenty of toys for children. He either didn’t notice that Josiah was wearing pyjamas, or was too polite to comment

We left there in time to come home for another friend who was meant to be coming round for tea, but she couldn’t make it after all, so we watched Return of the Jedi and last night’s X Factor, snatching a bite of tea in the adverts! Have ended the weekend with an early night all round, I’m off to read my book

Forgot to actually blog anything interesting yesterday, in all my excitement about new themes and tag clouds! We were at home mostly, Josiah did loads of MEP maths and some phonics workbook pages (way too easy but it got him writing so I didn’t mind) as well as violin as usual.

In the afternoon we took Robyn and Joe down to the Quay, Steve was around and wanted to try out his latest camera (:roll: no comments please) so we thought that might be a good place to go. Josiah brought bread to feed the ducks but as it turned out there were only Huge Killer Swans or Flappy Seagulls. Neither of which are particularly pleasant! I think swans are beautiful, but when they’re standing right next to me I am petrified of them (I’d forgotten quite how scared, actually ). The seagulls were so greedy they would practically swoop down on to you to grab bread from your hand! So we chucked bread at lightning speed and went to the park instead.

Steve and I were sort of having a competition to see who could come back with the best photos – I had the old camera and he had the new one. I think I won, although annoyingly this morning he had more views and comments on his pictures than I did, so now I’m blogging mine because I expect that will tip the balance