just another morning here

She can afford to smile Abbie’s turn for a parent-teacher interview today, and Steve & I were both proud of her glowing report as well. Apparently she’s working easily in the top groups for most things, but does find writing hard. Which I knew – it’s slow and not terribly neat, but her writing has improved loads this year already … gotta have something to work on, anyway

Had a good look through her tray and giggled at lots of her work … pleased to hear that she’s reading lots at school (which I hadn’t really picked up, she keeps her school reading books and her home reading books separate so that she doesn’t lose them!), it seems that the librarian challenges them with different books to read, so that’s really good. She’s reading Pippi Longstocking at the moment

We did have to wonder, though, if the teacher really was talking about the right child, as she said that Abbie had never lost any suns (she has, she’s lost one twice!), and had already had a thank you certificate for all round good behaviour (er, no she hasn’t! but oops, now you’ve said that you’ll have to give her one!). It had obviously been a long afternoon of parent interviews and ours was the last, so we’ll forgive her

Bought her a birthday present this evening as well, one I will hate, but I know she will love … that’s what comes of having a good parents’ evening and a hint from the EYHE list on the same night!

Well, after the very yummy gammon in coca cola last night, I had a diabolical violin lesson with Joe, where he sat and stubbornly refused to do anything for 25 minutes mainly because of a misunderstanding over dried apricots Steve and I have therefore decided to let Joe have a little holiday from tv/video games, just until next week’s violin lesson … because throwing a strop about dried apricots while you are supposed to be having a violin lesson really isn’t very clever, or respectful to your teacher, let alone any other issues I could care to raise.

Ah well – thankfully each day starts again new with no mistakes in it (even if you do have to put up with the consequences of yesterday’s ), and today has been nice … especially first thing this morning. I actually can’t believe the amount of difference it makes to have one child less to get ready for school. Anna and Abbie both managed to be up, dressed, breakfasted and music practiced in plenty of time. Hats and scarves were rooted out this morning, it’s suddenly got much colder here – and it was lovely to say goodbye to them peacefully and wave them happily on their way (am I ever glad we live so close to school!).

Joe chose some Usborne sticker maths pages to do (mainly addition and subtraction practice), played his violin for a bit, and read me a Kipper book beautifully, and we talked about exclamation marks, question marks, and full stops, and the difference they make to how we read things.

Popped into town after that as I had a list of errands to run/things to get, all of which we managed successfully, so we treated ourselves to lunch in town before getting the bus home again.

Josiah dug out a Snakes and Ladders game which he was setting up while I cleaned the kitchen floor, and found 6 dice while he was at it, so he told me what the highest score you could get with 1/2/3 dice each would be, etc. So we talked about the 6 times table generally – I’m trying to get him to see the relationships between a number and its factors, and I think he was just about getting there by the end. Anyway I quite like Snakes and Ladders apart from that awful bit at the end when you can’t quite throw the right number to finish, and then you always find yourself sliding down the longest snake and making the game take twice as long …

The girls arrived home in record time today, and then we had a houseful of people as various friends came to chat/play before tea – chucked them all out in time for a quick tea before taking Anna to her ballet lesson.

Highlight of my day was the evening – I’ve felt pretty rough with a sore throat/cold this week which today turned into a streaming nose (very pleasant) so I didn’t really feel like going out but I’d planned the evening and invited friends so I made the effort and even put on makeup to try and make myself at least look if not feel slightly more human! It worked (as well as could be expected ), and we had a lovely evening at our Picture House cinema, where we went just for drinks in the bar and to listen to some friends of ours who were playing at the jazz night there. Decided not to watch a film but to stick around for the second set by another band (trio of double bass, acoustic guitar, and fabulous vocal), and they were stunning so we really enjoyed that. Got to see friends and catch up as well, and we were still home by just gone 10pm, so all in all a good evening!

Today Josiah chose to read ‘Little Hotchpotch‘. It’s a pretty boring story in my opinion, in a sort of henny penny repetitive way, but he enjoyed it. About two thirds of the way through I realised that there was some quite nice descriptive language and metaphors in it, so when we got to the end we talked about those … and the difference between just describing something as ‘black’ or as ‘black as night’.

Had a break for violin practice (done beautifully again with no hassles, how long can it last?!) and Raven-watching, then went back to the Little Hotchpotch theme by making up our own imaginary animal – the plan was to draw it, describe it, then hopefully make a 3D model version … but that’s saved for another day as by the time we’d got that far and rounded up crafty bits from around the house Joe was wanting to play a game instead, so we had an extraordinarily long game of Trilemma/Addendum. Followed that with another episode of Raven (I’m guessing it must still be half term programming on CBBC?) before getting some food

After lunch Steve and I swapped over so I went to work, and they got lego out together – another of those things we simply haven’t had time for when he’s been at school so it was much appreciated. And children *should* have time to play lego

Girls got home from school and they all watched tv for a bit, then I came home, Steve took Anna out for her cello lesson, and the other two played with Geomags for a while before watching more tv (Blue Peter is a favourite here at the moment). The girls are currently engaged in bedroom lunacy aka putting their clean washing away before bed, while Josiah and Steve are discussing syllables …

Planning to watch the Da Vinci Code later, can’t think that I’ll enjoy the film as much as the book but you never know. We watched a couple of films last week too – R.V. which was just meant to be a bit of a laugh with the kids while we were staying in our camper, but Steve and I both enjoyed it too – we were in a slapstick humour sort of a mood, obviously – and the obligatory American mushy sentimental bit made us both cry!

Also made time to see Tsotsi in a couple of instalments last week, and I really enjoyed that film, it was brilliant cinematography and a compelling story too – definitely gets a recommendation from me and there are very few films that I actually go that far with these days!

Always catching up, or trying to at least …

The weekend
Was spent in various places; Steve and the children at home, and me away in London. They had a ball doing not very much although they did manage to buy new school shoes for Josiah, I’m not sorry to have missed that particular ordeal. They mooched around in town, had lunch in the park, and bought DVDs which they then went home and watched (Steve’s idea of a good day ). Apparently they missed me, because I don’t get cross as often as Daddy. Grass is always greener, I think, I’m sure I do!!

I was camping at Crystal Palace, where I went in order to meet an internet/acww friend! I decided to camp so that I could check out the site for possible future use ourselves, but as it turned out it was only 10 mins walk away from my friend’s house, so that was handy. And, she rents a room from a home educating family, I met her landlady as well so we compared Hesfes stories and I wished I was still a proper home educator. Ahem. Anyway, Chorna and I cooked, chatted, and played DS, all of which was lovely. And then I had some very self-indulgent time in the van as well, reading, sleeping, etc. Didn’t see London at all, but I couldn’t really be bothered, we’ll go back to the site again soon I’m sure. The drive home was horrendous, but the less said about that the better.

Got back into town, picked Anna up from her Wizard of Oz rehearsals, then went home to watch King Kong with friends for film night, we had dinner together in an extended interval too – quite enjoyed the film, at least I managed to stay awake for once! Mainly because we started it so early!!

Monday
Back to the usual routine (only not quite so usual as Russ is away for a couple of weeks so Steve and I are on full office duty), I think it’s the first day since school started again that Josiah hasn’t said he didn’t want to go.

Emma and Robyn moved in; they’re staying for a while because Steve’s parents’ house is undergoing major refurbishment. Meant I was finally forced into sorting out the cupboards and drawers in the music room which has needed doing ever since we moved house so that is a good thing! Might be chaotic to have them around all the time but on the other hand it could suit us all quite nicely and I’m sure she can babysit for us as much as we can for her

Got some new books for Anna; she’s doing WWII in school and is getting really into it, so thought it was the ideal opportunity to try and get her to read something different (having finished Harry Potter she’s back onto Lemony Snicket and while any reading is better than no reading, there is limited literary value in Lemony Snicket! although I notice The End is out soon, must get it and finally put the series to bed!). She fancied When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit so I’ve got hold of the trilogy for her, as well as a couple of Michelle Magorian books too. Don’t know if she’s actually going to read them but it’s worth a try! Now if only I could wean Abigail off those wretched fairy books …

Watched another film in the evening but have decided I can’t stand Nicolas Cage and anyway I was wifi-ing with acww friends at the same time which was more fun

Tuesday
I’m blogging from work This morning was interesting, getting everyone through breakfast, getting dressed, music practice etc. is bad enough usually but with Robyn thrown into the mix at that time in the morning it was even more chaotic. My children are *so* easily distracted! But we managed it with only one broken glass (Robyn ‘helping’ to empty the dishwasher!), and hey, it makes everything more exciting