At last

At last! Winter is over. (I refuse to say anything more positive for fear of jinxing it!)

The day started with Dorothea spending much time spooning poms poms into her South African bowls. This was intensely interesting.

Cheetah made a stage (I assume that he had some help), with speakers on either side. Each speaker had to be wired in using many tools, and once the sound was right, he and Nathaniel started on foldback and other accoustic refinements that would increase the listening pleasure of the audience.

We celebrated the weather by spending the morning in the park with friends. Nathaniel and D and P raced around the woods on wheeled vehicles, and worried other parents by climbing precariously into trees and pulling down branches to catapult things from.

Thea and F rampaged in a way that only they can. They found sticks and explored.

They chased the big boys, and Paddy took them on a adventure into the undergrowth.

They disappeared for some time, the only trace of them being the sounds of P coaching them through the branches: "F, step carefully over here, that's right lift up your whole leg. Thea, duck down so you down walk into the holly leaf".

That afternoon, after music, we rewarded ourselves for hard work (Nathaniel played some very fine long notes on his recorder, and was triumphant in his identifying of notes on a line on a stave) with an ice cream. To my immense surprise, both children adapted to sharing a cone very well and after a couple of tries were able to have two licks and then pass it on. Good skills!