Sunday 24 December 2017

December 2 (other stuff)

Of course there was other stuff that went on too....

Ian tried for the record for the most number of countries visited in one month (he failed due once he realised that Birmingham is considered the same country). In Rotterdam and Amsterdam he was rewarded with proper snow.

In Paris he was rewarded by his colleague going to the local cheese shop for us a providing a whole bag of carefully chosen cheeses for us!

Thea had cello concert. She decided to play a viola piece for her solo(!), and very nice it sounded too.

In fact they all sounded amazing. There was not one child who didn't adjust their tuning as they played (in a positive direction!), and the general tone was incredible. They all were very happy and played us all Jingle Bells. Thea hadn't played it before and did a great job at keeping up by playing by ear and watching Laura (the teacher)'s fingers!


Nathaniel spent most of December writing comics based on the computer game Terraria. One of his friends owns it, but Nathaniel and his other friends have only played it once or twice, so their comics have covered a fascinating array of ideas about what the game might be about!
This is the draft - the eventual comic was much more detailed (with much worse spelling!).

Saturday 23 December 2017

December 1 (Christmassy things)

Then advent started!

And so the advent calendar encouraged us to do Christmassy things like eating breakfast by candlelight!

Then the great card making started,

followed by much making and munching of mince pies.

Nathaniel's choir did their concert in the Minster Chapter House which was lovely! They make a wonderful noise (they are coached by the amazing Director of Music at the Minster School), and had a room full of parents and tourists absolutely captivated. They were a little surprised to have to provide an encore (apparently that has never happened before), and Alison had to explain to some of them what is was before they decided en masse what they would sing again! It was so sweet!



The next week, instead of a rehearsal, the choir had family carols at the school. We all brought tasty things to share and spent the morning singing carols (with accompaniment by the assistant organist who plays for the choir), with all the descants! Unsurprisingly, the families of the kids are quite enthusiastic singers as well and the noise we made was rather impressive! It was a very fun morning! Here is Han being happy outside the school:

I spent a happy morning in the church crypt making Christingles:


And then it was the school Christingle service. Thea was thrilled to represent her class in the telling of the Christmas story. She got to sit on the "stage" and read her line using a microphone.

Then they all got to terrify the teachers by lighting 178 Christingles and singing to them!

So despite school finishing on the day before Christmas Eve's Eve, we were suitably Christmassy!

Sunday 3 December 2017

November 2

And now it seems like we are constantly running around to things, but yet not doing much!

We went to the dentist and Thea's first wobbly tooth was encouraged out. She was very proud!

There was a training day at school and we were too sleepy to do anything exciting so we vegged at home playing minecraft, watching Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and covering the kitchen with bits of cut sugar and tissue paper while we did random Christmas crafts. They look better with the sun coming through them!

We celebrated Dylan's birthday by Dorothea and F learning to play scrabble and then playing it competitively for 3 hours!

Ian went off to hack a train which he enjoyed.

The rest of us went off to the Grand Northern Suzuki Play-until-you-drop. We got the train to Dewsbury, enjoyed a merry walk through the deserted streets to the rather amazing Civic Hall and then spent all day doing the "Gala Concert" and the "Graduation Concert" and the "Northern Playtogether". The kids were amazing and managed not only to stay awake for the whole thing, but to play their instruments for the whole thing, sit politely for the whole thing, and, most importantly, seemed to enjoy the whole thing!

There may be more pictures coming.....

And then suddenly it was December and so it must be time to decorate scooters for some random school event (it was slightly unclear as to why we were doing this)...


....and have fun at the Christmas Fair. We ran the candy cane fishing stall which involved much painting of giant candy cane signs and wrapping of "fishing rods" in electrical tape to make them look fancy. Many thanks to two grandparents who spent hours cutting out card christmas trees for the craft table. You'll be disappointed to hear that it was a total flop - no-one wanted to make christmas tree sun catchers!

But the candy cane fishing was busy all night and sold out of candy canes!

In the midst of this it snowed properly and we had a good 2 cm of snow on the ground for almost 2 hours! The things we get excited about..... This is when it started.

It's all good fun really!