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 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!

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 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!

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.

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.

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

So, desperate measures have been called in: at each practice I will pay 1p per repetition if he does 1, 2p per repetition if he does 2, 3p per repetition if he does 3, etc. So therefore for 10 repetitions of the section he’s working on that day, I am paying a whole £1. I guarantee that if Joe does at least 10 repetitions a day at every practice for a week (usually 5 days when he actually practices) he will have the piece pretty much licked, so for £5 it’s totally worth it. And I’ll have a son who’s practicing happily, which is also worth paying for He’s meant to do that many a day anyway but usually we struggle to get to three. Today he did eleven

In other news here: very glad to get to Friday, although slightly disappointed that as usual the weekend looks jam-packed with not much time to catch up on washing and housework. Still, tonight I am vegging out with trashy magazines, flapjack and cups of tea. The excuse for the magazines, of course, is that Anna has art homework which is to make faces by making a collage of faces, so I needed something better than the AA magazine, Autotrader or the Caravan Club magazine for her to use!

The girls are out at a Panto rehearsal, and Abbie’s got a friend coming for a sleepover – think they will probably sleep as they’ll be tired after rehearsals. And this friend comes to orchestra too so nice and easy, no special arrangements to be made.

Tomorrow’s pretty busy too but I’ll write about it after the event …

Friday evening was surprisingly pleasant. Anna went out to a BBQ with a school friend and then when she was reminded about her show rehearsal, dashed over to that as well. The other two children decided not to go to their usual kids’ club as they were too tired, so we popped some popcorn and settled down to watch Pete’s Dragon instead. I’m not sure I’ve ever watched it all the way through!
I got some much-procrastinated-over ironing done, and Steve had a nap And then we waited up for Anna to come home (this is becoming a common occurrence, at 12 yrs old!) Guess I will give up on waiting up after a while, but I always think it’s nice for her to have a little chat with us when she comes in, even if it is only quick!

Had to use my time well on Saturday but I did manage to get everything done. Essential shopping beforehand, then on to orchestra where I was on duty. Josiah joined in with a junk drumming workshop on at the same time as orchestra, which he really enjoyed. He was due to be re-joining orchestra in September and is now prevaricating over whether to join in with percussion rather than playing his violin!

My sister and brother in law popped in to see us on their way down to Cornwall for a holiday (lucky them) so we stopped for a cup of tea with them, but otherwise the afternoon was taken up with cleaning out the guinea pigs and fish, some music practice with Joe, trying to help Abbie with her end of year project (that ended in tears, will have to try again), and Anna did her music practice then sat around looking relaxed, without any homework to do, which annoyed Abbie even more – honestly, I think Y7 has been a doss!

Anna went out to Caitlin’s birthday bash, and after tea the rest of us went out for a walk and found a new local cache, which was much nicer than just slobbing around doing nothing – I like after dinner walks

On to today, which started early with someone coming to look at something we’d advertised in the paper. Thought if I made an early appointment that it would get us up and moving! (sold it, now we just have to take it to pieces and get it downstairs!)
Spent the rest of the morning sorting out a leaving present for the orchestra leader, Hannah’s (messages from the orchestra members framed around a photo montage) and then we had lunch.

Josiah’s concert was first this afternoon. I have grown to love the Suzuki thing over the past four years, and we’ve now known most of these kids for most of that time, so it is really nice to see how they’ve all grown up both in themselves and in their playing. Some of the older ones are *very* impressive these days!

I had tried to encourage Joe to practice a bit this morning because his piece hadn’t been sounding very good over the past few days, but he refused, on the basis that he knew he could do it. I despair, but didn’t want a fight! Steve upheld his refusal and he sat and watched Prince Caspian instead – and then played his piece beautifully. Could do with being louder in the loud bits but the dynamics are there …

The Suzuki concert finished just before 5pm, and the girls’ orchestra concert started at 6pm – couldn’t have packed them in much more closely, but we managed a quick cuppa with Steve’s parents inbetween. Because I knew I’d potentially be fairly rushed, I hadn’t volunteered to help with anything this time, so it was nice not to have to get there early but just to sit and watch Grandma wins lots of grandma points for making it to both concerts; Grandpa joined us for the orchestra one as well.

Stopped to pick up fish & chips on the way home, which was a lovely end to the day. Hustled children to bed rather quickly, caught up on Top Gear (samey) and the news, and that’s about it!

Josiah had his first group lesson with the older, more advanced children in our Suzuki group today (and was sight reading his part in the piece in the video because it was his first time). He found it tough in some ways but managed well, and seemed to really enjoy the extra challenge, having been at the top of the younger group for quite a while now. Probably also a bit pleased to have achieved big kid status in the group – he really likes a couple of the older boys there, although his favourite violin friend wasn’t there today. In fact on the way home Joe was telling me what he would have to practice and being generally super positive about violin, as he has been for a while now (better not speak too soon here though!), which is such a relief after a couple of years of very hard slog!

Bit worried about the garage at the moment … wondering how long the recession might go on for as it does seem to be filtering down. I try to ignore it while Steve tries to fix it – both pretty useless reactions really, somewhere in the middle might be a good plan.

Anyway back to tonight: dinner, wine, X Factor, Animal Crossing, Casualty, and at this rate the children currently fighting over pieces of electronics kits will be going to bed early so it should be a peaceful evening!

Quite a long video – and this was only the violin section of the concert! There was a cello playdown, a flute group, and two soloists who performed as well. Just to explain what I mean by playdown: at the concert, if you are graduating from level 4 (for example), you would be on stage to play your graduation piece, and then all the pieces from the levels below, hence a build up of children performing, as by the end they were all on stage.

Joe was graduating from book 2, so can be spotted about 4/5 of the way through the video, if you know where to look. Still very proud of him