As can been seen by the fact that this is just the second time I've managed to post since the first week in February, I've been a bit rubbish at keeping up to date lately. I shall once more resolve to do better and probably manage for a while at least!
So, what have we been up to? Well being ill to varying degrees quite a lot and we're still getting over various bugs with nasty coughs and colds. Apart from that we have done some other stuff though that is much more interesting.
In early February, although I shamefully neglected to blog about it, we went to Shakespeare's Birthplace for one of their home educator days. Both of my girls chose to do the key-stage 2 one (if there were in school, M would be the last year of KS2 and K would be the first of KS3), called The Play's the Thing if I recall correctly, since they are vehemently anti blood and gore type things and that was the focus of the key-stage 3 session. The session involved helping a couple of actors who'd lost the rest of their troupe, most of their props and most of their scripts to put on a play, which was cobbled together from a few scenes which they had managed to rescue. First all the children formed a ship (K & M decided to be the mast with M sitting on K's shoulders) and learned a song in three parts, then we had to work out the best order for the scenes that had been salvaged, before practising them in groups and then we all went outside to perform it in the garden, with the actors taking the main parts. K & M did not want to join in most of it, but happily played the part of the mast of the ship that was wrecked at the beginning and then played instruments with some of the others for the rest of the time. Afterwards we went out for pizza with some friends who had come too, which as it turned out was incredibly fortunate, as not only did we have a brilliant time with them, but when it came time to pay I discovered I didn't have my purse, so they could rescue me! Happily it turned out that I'd dropped my purse in the car - phew! We collected Granny, who lives about 15 minutes from Stratford, before heading home and she stayed for a week, which was lovely.
The girls and I also went over to Leicester in early February for Orchestra Unwrapped for the second time, which we enjoyed again. Still on a musical theme, M has taken part in Bandwise again (an annual event) and is now keen to join the Nottingham Youth Band as soon as she is around Grade 2 standard, which shouldn't be too long now. It will make for a ridiculously busy Thursday, but we'll cope. Playing music in groups was such a huge part of my youth that I am very keen to give her the opportunity to do so regularly too.
M's Bandwise rehearsals were all afternoon on Saturday and Sunday one weekend, followed by another short rehearsal followed by the concert the following Sunday (Mothering Sunday). On the Saturday, I had a very rare day with just K, which was lovely. We went to the cinema in town for a live theatre broadcast of Kenneth Branagh's production of The Winter's Tale, which we both enjoyed before having a snack and doing a bit of shopping. We also went to talk to the lovely woman who runs Locally Produced for You to see if she would be interested in stocking some of K's quilled cards and she is! K has been working out what it's going to cost her to make each card and how much she will earn after the 20% cut for the shop. Rather exciting! K has started making the 10 cards suggested to start with, 5 of each of the two designs she took to show.
In other news, A has been travelling a ridiculous amount with work. In February in particular he was away almost as much as he was home. We're used to him being away overnight but he was away for the whole week (or nearly) twice in February, which is very unusual and hard.
Our regular things have been shaken up a bit too. Our 'normal' week now looks something like this:
Monday - Old Dalby HE group (twice months), Swimming lesson (weekly)
Tuesday - Fun Club (monthly), Korfball (weekly)
Wednesday - French horn (M - weekly), Ice-skating (monthly), Climbing (monthly)
Thursday - Piano (K - weekly), Gymnastics (weekly), Scouts (weekly)
Friday - Gymnastics (weekly)
I'm sure there's more that I could add, but that will do for now and I hereby resolve to blog more regularly again!
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