November 2

This week was made somewhat more entertaining by the fact that the tumble that Georgie and I took on the Moors resulted in a avulsion fracture of one of my fingers (that would why it hurt so much!). Basically a tendon in my finger pulled a slice of bone off my middle finger middle phalange. Fun.
Sadly I don't have an X-ray to share with you as they don't even print them anymore, just show you quickly on a screen. Nothing to take home!

Ian then departed for a rather wet Rome.

Thea played for the school Year 4 hockey team (yes, she is in year 2!) in the inter-school tournament.

She was in goal (unpadded!), and to be honest, didn't get much action. The school attackers were relentless! But it all worked well and they won! So they go through to the North Yorkshire tournament in the summer.

Here is this week's picture of enjoying York during Nathaniel's choir rehearsal. This week I mainly curled up with my book in a quiet spot in the Minster School and was serenaded with beautiful Christmas choral deliciousness (including a choir mutiny that turned the Rocking Carol very effectively into We Will Rock You).

On Sunday those of us in the country had a day of hockey tournament in the rain in Leeds. Girls in the morning, boys in the afternoon.

Again, Thea played keeper for the B team and they did very well. They came out top of their division and have been promoted to the first division above the City of York A team (if I have read the league table properly)! I was very grateful for the keepers kit, and Thea stayed warm and dry the whole day. She didn't want to take it off and spent the afternoon playing with the boys who were off the pitch.

In the afternoon, Nathaniel played for the boys B team and they did fantastically. They again met the Leeds A team who had given them such a hard match a month ago. But this time they knew how to deal with them and Nathaniel ran and ran and ran and ran. He and his fellow defender exhausted the Leeds attackers and didn't let them get anywhere. City of York really deserved their win. And so the boys B team also goes into Division 1, again (if I have read the tables properly - they are not very user friendly!), above the City of York A team!

After all the running about we needed to do some quieter things. The kids prepared for a birthday party at Laser Quest (very quiet!!), by making cards that they thought the recipient would enjoy!

And we did some wax resist painting. You can take the family out of Steiner, but not the paint from out of their fridge!

November 1

Ah - Children in Need day. Another reason to bake cakes for school. We didn't try to make anything delicious, but concentrated on the icing (themed of course!) which is the aspect by which kids select cakes.

After that, I enjoyed listening to rock music from 1997 with a venue full of other old people. Fortunately it seemed like we were the youngest people there, so we got to feel smug.

Reef may have changed in looks since the 90s, but they sound pretty much the same!
After the birthday celebrations were concluded, we trundled up to the Moors with a dog to make the most of the gorgeous weather. The views were spectacular!

We bimbled along the top of the Cleveland way, and made the most of the springy heather.

 

Lunch was called at the Wainstones where there was much enjoyment of the view.

The kids played a complicated game related to pokemon. It was beyond me so I scampered around with Georgie.

  

We watched heather burning with interest. The fires didn't stay burning for long which was surprising considering how damp it felt.

The Dorothea did some climbing. Apparently it was scarier up there than she had imagined it was going to be!

She was, of course, followed by Nathaniel.

We decided to take the scenic route back and discovered that Georgie isn't much of a climber. In retrospect, this was a bad decision (see future post).

In this picture, Georgie is clearly saying "You want me to go where?!":

 But she survived the experience, even if she was a little sleepy on the way home:

Seven

Dorothea had a lovely birthday - thank you so much for all her wonderful presents and cards.

It's fun having a birthday at the weekend as you can do things like go out to lunch. We headed into town where Thea redeemed her Pokemon box voucher.

She decided that what she would like best was lunch at Pizza Express with J&V.

Afterwards we headed home and played with friends and had cake for afternoon tea - white chocolate and raspberry cake made with the last of the raspberries from the garden.

October/November

Half term arrived and we decided not to trog up and down the country, but to enjoy York. So we took delivery of one dog named Georgie whose family was away for two weeks.

She is a very cuddly dog and likes to spend her day going for walks and then snuggling down for a snooze. Preferably with a patient friend!

She didn't mind the kids going to school as long as there were people working in the house with the right priorities.

Eventually I started to get used to the early morning walks! It turns out that once I'm out of the house, I rather enjoy it and insist on longer and longer walks, exploring all my favourite bits of York near us.

I loved how it made me really notice the autumn weather and the beautiful skies. And appreciate how good the weather is here. Two weeks and I only took Georgie out in precipitation once - and that was snow!

I noticed other things too!

Sometimes the kids came too (though it appears that I took no pictures of Nathaniel).

But sometimes it was just me and the dog. I rather liked the change in light from the morning walks to the evening walks.

We took her to visit our favourite walks - in the Nidd Gorge;

and Hagg Wood.

She really started to become one of the family. She slept in the children's room and liked to be carried up there every night.

We were all rather sad to see her go!

There. Got dog pictures out of my system now!

We did other stuff too. We were inspired by Henning Wagenbreth'spapercut art to do some of our own:

Nathaniel spent a happy morning learning how to draw pokemon and designing his own cards.

It was Halloween, so the kids and their friend carved pumpkins. These have been rather inspired by Red Alert.

And then, to top off a busy half term, Ian ran a hacktrain to Paris and Frankfurt simultaneously with me running a Parenting Science Gang conference leaving two hard working grandparents to care for two children, one of whom had scarlet fever. Easy peasy! (There are no photos to accompany this feat!)