More busyness!

We've been rather busy again lately!

We had an arty couple of days on Friday and Saturday.  On Friday we met up with friends A, N, L & T at the Lace Market art gallery to visit the Artist as Mother as Artist exhibition.

My (sort of) selfie with one of the pieces.

Afterwards we headed to the Dice Cup, where we had a go at a few games.  Ghost Blitz was a good game to start with, once everyone knew what they were doing, as with English, French and FSL as first languages between the 7 of us having a visual game was a good plan.  We had a go at a few other games including some that did involve more language with varying degrees of participation and success, but quite a lot of laughter anyway (which is the main thing in any case).

The next day, K, M & I spent most of the afternoon at the Lady Bay Arts festival.  Dozens of different artists who work in all sorts of different media were showing their work in about 20 venues, mostly in peoples homes but also the school, one of the churches and a couple of businesses.  In many cases the artists were there and happy to talk about their work.  Unfortunately I haven't got any photos, but works included paintings, ceramics, metal work, textiles and many more.

On Sunday K cooked the meal that she had planned a couple of months ago when we spent a day at the library while having a window put in in the kitchen.  I knew that it involved duck but no more than that.  It turned out to be a Vietnamese style duck and noodle broth, which was very good (although not really filling enough for the main meal that it was supposed to be, particularly not for A but he ate some cheese and crackers while we were waiting for pud, so it was fine), followed by chocolate soup!

Since buying some workbooks at M's request a few weeks ago and after ignoring them for a while after the first quick look, M has got in the habit of doing a comprehension exercise most days from one of the books.  We have had some discussion about how sometimes the right answer may not be the one that gets you the mark, for example, there was a question about the made-up word 'doctopus', asking what two real words it makes you think of.  M had answered 'doctor' and 'puss as in cat', which clearly is correct if that is what it makes her think of, but I think that the answer they are looking for is probably 'doctor' and 'octopus'. 

After some disagreement about who was going to write to whom, my suggestion that the girls could write letters to Nana and Great Grandma about our recent holidays was accepted.  My idea was partly that it would be very much appreciated, that they would probably get a reply and also it would be a good reason to write.  I did suggest that I would quite like to read the letters, so I could see if there was anything (grammar, punctuation etc.) that we needed to have a look at together.  Yesterday M disappeared into her bedroom, emerged sometime later having written a letter to Nana that was 4 sides of writing paper long.  I wasn't allowed to read it though, because it's private, so I'm going to ask my lovely mother-in-law if she can give me some feedback about how it's written.  K has also started a letter to Great Grandma, although the girls are going to be seeing her tomorrow, so she will be finishing it off and sending it later.

Granny has come to stay this week, which is always lovely.  One thing that I have found quite entertaining is that she has marked the pages in M's workbooks that she has done, despite the fact that in vast majority of cases (except for those that M had chosen not to show me!) I had already looked at them and talked through any mistakes with her.  As a primary school teacher by profession and instinct, she just can't help herself - and it was all done in a very positive way with M.

M had decided a few days before Granny arrived that she was going to prepare a quiz for everyone while she was here, and spent quite a bit of time preparing and researching and came up with a number of rounds, including naming a variety of sports, identifying pictures of birds of prey, answering multiple choice questions about rhinos, and a 'missing vowels' round (like in Only Connect) on the subject of dog breeds. 

While here Granny asked K to make her a couple of birthday cards one for a friend and the other for a family member, both of whom are 70 this year, which she did.  K really isn't what you would call a business woman, as she wanted Granny to buy her more general cards from Locally Produced for You, as she thinks it's good that the K there gets some of the money!

The 70th cards.

Tomorrow A has a meeting where Granny lives, so is taking her home and also taking the girls down for the day and they will be seeing Big Grandad, Uncle M and Great Grandma.  It'll be the first time that they'll have seen Big Grandad since his birthday in March, so K is taking his present which she made.  M is taking her French horn and will be playing Puff the Magic Dragon and Happy Birthday (and possibly some other things) while it is presented, and also made a Puff shaped gingerbread biscuit to give him, made with a batch of others yesterday.

A quilled Puff the Magic Dragon.