just another morning here

Well, actually, the couple in question have only been planning their wedding for 6 months, but I’ve been waiting for them to get married for about 7 years!!! We have known Julian for ages, and Maria since Josiah was a tiny baby (think she introduced herself to me by coming and asking for a cuddle with him, he was quite cute in those days), and long thought they’d be great together - they took a little longer to come round to the idea

We had a fantastic but very busy day. I got up early to fit in a quick trip to Pets at Home (ran out of woodshavings) so that I could clean out the guinea pigs before everything else, then it was time to get ready.

We all scrubbed up pretty nicely today I think, although Steve had to get instructions on tying his tie, and then look at the Moss Bros website to make sure he’d got it right! Hoping that one of the family photos that the official photographer took will come out nicely, but I took this one as the kids were practising their piece for the evening.

I had the honour of being chauffeur so we had ribbons on the car … dropped Steve & kids at the church then got to drive around town being stared at! Maria also had her photo taken by some random Japanese tourists who’d arrived at the Georgian Tearooms just as she was leaving so that was amusing! Really enjoyed the driving bit, even if I was a bit disorganised and had to get fuel between the wedding and the reception - but even that was funny as at Sainsbury’s petrol station we bumped into someone who vaguely knew Maria and had to come and say hello!

Can’t really do the day justice in one short blog post, but suffice to say it was beautiful in every way possible. Everyone looked gorgeous, Maria especially was simply glowing. The service itself was meaningful and reflected the God-centredness and thoughtfulness that personifies Julian and Maria together.

The reception - both the coffee and cake bit after the service, and the meal later at the Tumbling Weir - was lovely, all the food was great, and the general atmosphere was one of family celebration, just as it should be. Maria had thought to put together goody bags for all the kids, so my three were thrilled to find those on their chairs, and the colouring etc. kept them happy for ages, so it worked! (2yo Josh’s playdoh amused everyone on our table, too!) The speeches deserve a mention, as Julian’s speech was far and away the most moving I have ever heard, public declarations of love like that don’t come around all that often - definitely had me blubbing!!

The evening part of the reception was really fun, as there wasn’t a band or disco - instead all the guests had been invited to perform if they wanted to. So there was an eclectic mix of items from poetry to all different sorts of music, including a last minute blues jam including Julian himself which was amazing (I must also admit to being pleased with the hymn that snuck in here, as we didn’t have any proper hymns during the service!).

Anna, Abbie & Joe wanted to do something and had prepared a little trio version of Eleanor Rigby together - which went really well except that the girls only repeated the verse twice instead of three times, which Josiah got a bit upset about (watch the very end of the vid!) but at least he stopped as well!!

Got home late and knackered, dumped everything and went to bed. Then woke up at 4.30am for the Grand Prix

Couldn’t be bothered to go and get a proper camera so the photo’s rubbish but I don’t care all that much any more.

Spent most of the afternoon helping Abbie with her science homework. Just sometimes I am grateful for my folder of home ed links, as we first did this activity over four years ago (when I had an even more rubbish digital camera!).

Had orchestra this morning, and while the kids were there, I showed a friend and her partner around our ‘to let’ house and they have decided to rent it so that was a great result. Their first baby is due in 5 weeks’ time so they needed somewhere to live rather urgently!

Now cooking a roast and getting through the essential housework very slowly … and looking forward to a relaxed Saturday night.

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

Josiah has every right to feel proud of himself and utterly exhausted this weekend. In fact I think he’s so tired that he can’t manage to admit he’s pleased with himself yet, but I hope he will, tomorrow perhaps!

We had a really busy weekend full of musical stuff, and a night with friends on top! First came the strings workshop at orchestra, which this week was fine, Joe just joined in with no problems, and seemed to really enjoy himself this time, thank goodness. Simply a case of knowing what something is going to be like, and he’s ok. After sticking around on duty while EYO had their rehearsal as well, we got home around 1.30pm, and only had an hour for lunch before we needed to turn around and leave for Josiah’s Suzuki Group lesson.

So, the afternoon was pretty much filled up with that (3 - 5pm). Joe enjoys these lessons as well, they’re really fun, but he works hard during them too - lots of practice for the next day’s concert.

Home for a quick tea, a very brief catchup with Uncle Marky who appeared to stay the night in our house while we were away, having brought my sister back to university - still sorry we couldn’t see more of him but hey ho. We got to the Portico around 9pm and had a lovely evening catching up.

This morning some of us went out to walk Dylan (and find caches ) while others of us lazed around the house. It was a beautiful morning for a walk … and the kids enjoyed just hanging around together too, an added bonus in an otherwise fairly manic weekend! We left there late morning and dropped Anna with another friend in Reading, then drove into London for Josiah’s graduation concert. Typically Steve managed to find a free parking space just around the corner from the concert hall!

The Suzuki system doesn’t have exams, instead you ‘graduate‘ from a book/level when you are ready, and this involves making a recording of a particular piece which is sent off for adjudication, then comments are sent back to the teacher.

Joe did this recording back in the summer, so would have graduated anyway, the concert was just an ‘icing on the cake’ thing, and we decided to go and take part this time round. We’d been to watch something similar a couple of years ago, so had an idea of what to expect, but it was still fairly nerve-racking for Josiah. His jitters got the better of him during the rehearsal, but he did manage to go and stand up on the edge of the stage with his teacher, behind a curtain so no-one could see him! After that though (and an ice cream break ), he knew what the expectations were, and was absolutely fine and happy to go and sit with the rest of his group for the proper performance.

The concert itself was good, and needless to say I was exceedingly proud of Josiah for managing to take part Video may follow tomorrow but it’s too late to faff around with it now.

Drove out of London appreciating lots of nice houses - the benefit of not being on the underground! Picked Anna up and carried on to Cribb’s Causeway before stopping for dinner, and then got home really late, and everyone went straight to bed. Another suzuki friend here told me they weren’t going because it was too much of a late night on a Sunday (having been in previous years) and I can see why, I imagine it will have a knock on effect tomorrow, but hey ho, you only live once.

Beautiful weather, time with family, and some geocaches to boot. All housework done yesterday so today was free for us to enjoy. The kids and I went to church, while Steve attempted some invoicing at the workshop but after an hour with customers, then he ran out of paper, so he didn’t get very far!

After lunch we went out for an exceedingly muddy but fun walk ourselves, then ended up at the grandparents’ along with Em, Robyn & Lola. Steve and our kids stayed there while I took everyone else out on another walk and found a few more caches - Robyn loved the treasure hunting - one of these days I will have to take her to a bigger cache with proper treasure in it! We stayed for tea afterwards, and then a film while Steve de-virused all the PCs in the house. Fab day, and I feel like we had a productive and enjoyable weekend all round

Now I must fold the washing otherwise no-one will have any school clothes to wear tomorrow!

I haven’t been, but this morning I am … nothing at all to do with having smashed some tetris scores

Not much to report really, hence the silence here. Everyone is just getting on with life and enjoying it mainly I think.

Josiah’s having a bit of a stress over violin - but this is nothing new The boy can’t make his mind up, one minute it’s the worst thing ever and anyone who suggests any practice is evil so a tantrum must be thrown, and the next minute he realises he’s grown out of his quarter size violin and could really have a half size, actually he’d really like one and he doesn’t want to give up after all.

Orchestra was a bit of a problem this week because there was not just one, but three changes during the section rehearsal (new tutor, different and bigger group of children, different room) and he just doesn’t do change well at all, so that was a tough one to get through. I am absolutely worried stiff about his Suzuki graduation concert next weekend as I’m really not sure how best to prepare him. It’s never ever the actual violin playing that is the problem, put it like that.

Joe’s really enjoying his new Tae Kwon Do classes though. These have (thankfully) stayed with the same teacher, in the same room, with a small group of children!

Abbie is fabulous She cleaned out the guinea pigs on her own yesterday (well, Joe was meant to be helping but I’m not sure he did really!), and is generally just good at getting on with things. She’s really happy with her new teacher this year which is great as I suspect she might end up with the same teacher next year as well.

Anna, meanwhile, seems to think that high school is the ticket to everything … and naturally, that means that she can act like a 16 year old even though she is still only 11! Hmm. She joined the choir at school this week which I think was a good move, she’ll enjoy that. She’s also planning to stay on at the primary school choir as their accompanist which will be good for her as well, but that doesn’t start up again until after half term.
Homework etc. doesn’t seem to have been too strenuous yet, neither have the lessons themselves. They spent one whole day last week doing Cognitive Ability Tests (as if they didn’t test the Y6s enough last term!), quite what the purpose of that was, I don’t know, as Anna says they’re already in groups for subjects, but there we go.
Apart from school, Anna’s particularly enjoying the church youth group which she started going to a couple of weeks ago.

Work for Steve and me just plodding along I think. Steve is sort of waiting for the ‘credit crunch’ thing to hit the garage but so far, other than actual car prices going down significantly, business itself doesn’t seem to have been too badly affected. Only time will tell.

My school had parents’ evenings this week which I opted to stay for because I am so nosey. No, seriously, it helps you to be able to support the children better if you have an idea of their family life, not to mention what it is that their parents want for them. All the children come to school on county transport, so we never get to meet the parents otherwise! I enjoyed taking my class out to Gym Club in the week too, and another highlight was spending an afternoon in a different class, just helping out as we had less children than usual and they were a member of staff down.

Still umming and aahing over this blog. A couple of blog-friends have stopped recently and I guess I have sympathy with the reasons for stopping a public blog, so watch this space. I might write more behind the safety of a password!

Some more smiley faces on my map, and it all happened spontaneously which was fab
Joe was at his friend’s house, Anna was on the way to hers, when my friend rang up and decided to come over for some caching. Abbie moaned and groaned about it, desperately ringing round her friends to see which ones were in, but didn’t find any - then the minute before we left her friend rang and invited her over as well!

So I had a happy couple of child-free hours to walk and hunt. We picked Josiah up and did one more cache on the way back, which is why he’s in one of the photos too! Especially pleased with the cache where I’m in the photo - firstly it was a satisfying puzzle to solve, and then it was a cool cache hide as well

Steve won his class at Wiscombe hillclimb again today (no Cosworth, yawn), while his dad was doing the honours for us at the Guildhall Motor Show, which we did last year and it was good enough for us to want to repeat the experience this year as well. Steve and I will be there tomorrow so if you read this and you’re in town during the day, then pop and see us.