just another morning here

Thankfully schools here had all finished on Friday, so this weekend we only (ha!) had all the Christmas performances by the extra groups. It’s always a manic weekend but lots of fun.

All credit to Josiah, who had the busiest day of all of us. He was out of the house around 8.40am for a choir rehearsal 9-10.30. He then had a service to sing from 11am-12.15pm. Then came a brief break while we collected the girls from Orchestra, dropped Abbie to a friend’s, and made it into town with half an hour to grab MacDonalds before he played violin with the Suzuki Group for the best part of three hours. I walked him back to the Cathedral at 4.45pm where he had a rehearsal from 5-6pm before tea in the boarding house and then the Cathedral Choir’s Christmas concert from 7.30-9.30pm. The choristers were given £5 each for having sung the extra service in the morning so he dashed off to buy sweets in each break from the violin playing and enjoyed sharing them during the busking. We’ve been doing this busking each Christmas for five years now, and it’s quite interesting to see how much Josiah has grown up since we started! And Anna too … we had to drag her away from her friends at the end, as they’d started improvising around various pop songs and would happily have carried on for hours I think, but the Harlequins Centre had had enough of them by then

The first pic is from 2007 and the second one from this year. I did have photos of 2008, 2009, and 2010 too, but thought you’d probably get bored by all of those

The Choir’s concert was excellent too, we really enjoyed it. Josiah is definitely more confident now and it’s lovely to watch. He’s signed up for an extra choir jaunt to support a choir in North Devon this week, so that shows how much he enjoys the choir aspect of his life – it’s VERY hard work but it is fun too.

Yesterday we had the ECO Christmas concert – very enjoyable as usual and we particularly enjoyed having the Ockment Valley Handbells performing both separately and with the orchestra – I wish I had video-ed some of it but I only have photos I’m afraid. Again fun to see the pictures from Christmas concerts in years gone by and compare them to this year’s!

Again the first pic is Anna’s first year at ECO in 2007, and the cello section this year, with Anna as the new section principal. 2008 was Abbie’s year since the concert was actually on her birthday, 2009 is best forgotten because of the junk band we shared with (ow), and 2010 is memorable for having NO photos probably because I was more worried about getting there safely in the snow than remembering the camera!

We now have a week off school, where I’m trying to be as productive as possible so that we can have a proper break from Christmas Eve onwards. Time to stop blogging, have lunch, and get on with some school-work …

It’s the most wonderful time of the year … with the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you be of good cheer! But that was before they tried to find a parking space in town – not one but two days running – which was most definitely not a very cheery experience! We cheated today and parked at the Cathedral – well, some of the parking was in support of chorister duties!

It’s been a weekend of concerts and general ‘gearing up to Christmas’ activities; it’s the first Sunday in Advent, and from now until Christmas it is getting a bit daft with concerts and services here there and everywhere. Anyway, very proud of the children who have coped with a weekend full of it, and not much downtime inbetween. I did video the cello/piano concert but then realised that my fingers must have touched the microphone because the sound is rubbish so I’m not posting that, and the best bit of Anna’s was this little out-take anyway. I did have to laugh when she played the piece, as I had *never* heard it before in my life – so who knows when she practised it!

Abbie had some time at home today but Josiah was out all day with a service/suzuki group sandwich! Anna was involved too, so she came on a bus in to join us once she had finally found her music I managed not to put my finger in front of the microphone today, so here are a few snippets of the Suzuki group concert that they were practising for last week, and here is the big kids’ quartet. We stuck Anna on a bus back home afterwards and stayed in town for the Advent service at the Cathedral.

I did get some work done this morning but still have more to do, as well as lots of laundry to fold … such is a Sunday night with no snow on the horizon!

This particular Sunday evening is beautiful because I have the day off tomorrow! It’s an ‘occasional day’, traditionally plonked on a Monday at the end of November, purportedly for some Christmas shopping! I’m intending to do some, from the comfort of my armchair (that’s why the internet was invented), after I’ve done Mum stuff like the school run, which I don’t usually do. For once I’m really looking forward to it! And I’m going to catchup on housework and schoolwork that I would usually have squeezed into the weekend. But it’s so lovely to have a relaxed Sunday evening instead of being slightly stressed about Monday morning

Today we popped up to Oxfordshire to see my sister for breakfast, which was lovely – good to be able to give her a hug in real life rather than virtual/text ones.

Got home by lunchtime, in time to deposit Anna to the cinema to see Harry Potter with friends (Abbie saw it with her friends yesterday), then take Josiah into town for a quick rehearsal for a concert next week. Videoed them practising
He had to dash from there to evensong – I fitted in a quick coffee with my friend whose kids are all that little bit older than ours (the two big violinists in the video are her youngest two children). This friend has acted as a mentor with regard to schools, music etc – so I value our irregular meetups in Bostons – she’s fab.

Josiah sang really well this afternoon – the first time I’ve really thought so. There were a few choristers away and so he had music to himself and they’d obviously been told to sing up – but it was nice to see him giving his all.

Since the last post I seem to have spent rather a lot of time in the car. I drove some people to Heathrow very early on Friday morning, which was a very easy drive. Then I did about 16 caches on a walk that took me about three hours – some of them were really tricky. After that I drove home, taking a couple more caches in en route, but got stuck on the M4 and M5 for hours, not such fun.

While I spent all day doing that, the kids had a good day with Steve; he took them swimming – something I *never* thought he’d do! In the evening we cracked open a bottle of fizzy wine and spent our mealtime making toasts to various little things – sometimes it’s good to celebrate the small things too After that, we watched Slumdog Millionaire, the start of a good weekend for films.

Saturday was orchestra as usual (though Anna took her bassoon as well as the spare cello which she doesn’t like!), and jobs as usual – cleaning out the guinea pigs, hoovering, etc. The girls had friends round again, too. Steve went back to work, as that was infinitely preferable to helping with housework, apparently After dinner we watched My Sister’s Keeper, and I blubbed all the way through. Thought it was very good though, and a reasonably close adaptation of the book – different ending but I still thought the film kept to the feel of the book despite the alternate ending.

Today Josiah and I drove down to South Devon to meet some new friends that we’ve got to know through our Suzuki Group – Joe and their little boy hit it off instantly over Pokemon cards, as you do. The mum is a piano teacher, so we arranged for her to accompany Josiah at the upcoming festival, so we needed to get together to practise for that. I *think* it went well, it certainly helps to focus on the things that need polishing between now and then. Very wowed by their house, which was beautiful, including purpose built music studio! Had to drag Josiah away as well.

Meanwhile at home Anna and Abbie spent most of the morning sorting out stuff for Anna’s new school, and doing some last minute bits of work, tidying etc. Anna then disappeared off with Aunty Emma at the last minute, to help look after Robyn and Lola during Em’s rehearsal. Steve has been out with a customer on a camper van – I never know if him being a long time is a good sign or not. When he’s home I think we’ll be watching the last film of the weekend, Seven Pounds.

Then I suppose I ought to think about what I’m teaching tomorrow ….