This week

It's been a gentle week, I'd say that it was the calm before the storm, but considering how hectic May was, I think it's more like the eye of the storm. Here's some of what happened:

- I had a trip to London to pay homage to baby Molly (and chat with Hannah!), and managed to fit in supper with Nim and Higlary, and a fun morning to myself mooching round Borough Market (and making purchases that will only fuel the kids' love of spanish cured meat), and then Tate Modern.

I may have spent more time in the bookshop than in the galleries!

- I decided that just running increasingly long distances was getting a little silly, and bemused Thea by taking her up and down the hill to the Moor as fast as I could. She scooted, I ran. Except I went fast on the way up and she went fast on the way down. All very silly!

- The rain eventually stopped and Nathaniel recreated a PE lesson for me and Thea, teaching us tennis skills. It was actually rather fun!

- Ian and I rehearsed for our show at the Theatre Royal in a couple of weeks, and Ian (who is joining in with the storytelling), has been learning lines frantically!

- It's my favourite time of the year to be on the Moor - the butter cups are everywhere, so Dorothea and I have done much scooting! We collected elderflowers and put them in for campagning, but they got left too long and started to go mouldy! We're hoping for a bit of sun tomorrow so that we can try again.

- School has restarted again, and so has exhaustion, which sometimes leads to quiet snacks in the sun. They sat on the trampoline and read. I lay on a rug and read. And we all ate tasty ice lollies made from French cherry sirop!

- And a little boy who has worked hard in preparation for his music concert (in which he will play two different recorders!), sucessfully negotiated cupcakes.

Next week it all kicks off again......

Scholastic achievements

Last week Nathaniel was named "Star of the Week" for his class and Thea and I went to assembly to help celebrate.

He was crowned the first ever "Punctuation Prince" which baffles him entirely. My indoctrination has led him to believe that if he doesn't punctuate his work accurately, it will not be understandable, and therefore he hasn't appreciated that there is an option for him not to do so! Poor kid.

We haven't seen the piece of work to which this accolade pertains, so instead I present Nathaniel's efforts for The Big Write. Every few weeks the whole school shares a writing session where they all write on the same subject. Except the reception class have until now participated in a big talk. A few weeks ago, they were deemed suitably competant to join in with the writing (though on a more tedious subject), and this is what Nathaniel produced on the subject of "My favourite thing to do".

(lic/lighc = like, pailing = playing, and my absolute favourite, bomfighus = bonfires)

This piece follows a theme which has appeared in other work that I have espied on the classroom walls:

You don't necessarily have to acheive academically to become Star of the Week. Last time it was awarded to Nathaniel, it was due to his Police Submarine which he constructed in the yard behind their classroom using all the furniture. I throughly believe he was awarded this a)so that he'd take it apart and b)to persaude him that good things do happen when he leaves the lego corner!

What Ian did

What do you choose - an easy life, or being exhausted but having done interesting things? Hope you chose the latter.....

Siracusa

The old ampitheatre. They didn't bother visiting the more modern one - after all who needs to see a perfectly preserved Roman ampitheatre?!

Talinn

Modes of transport have featured highly in the requests for photos.

San Sebastian

Well, obviously not in San Sebastian, but on that trip.

All hail Ebay....

.....the bringer of things that you'd never have been able to get otherwise!

Sleningford Bliss

We had put dates in the diary for camping long before weather forecasts became available for any given weekend, and as previously mentioned, this didn't always produce an ideal result. However, this weekend the gods smiled upon us. Two whole days of 21 degrees in the sun in a campsite on the river. Perfect.

No seriously, it was perfect!

Sleningford is 45 minutes from York (so travel was easy-peasy), on a bend in the River Ure. The campsite is on an island complete with beaches and slow rapids and rocks to climb on and so on. On Saturday morning, we set up the wood burning stove on the beach, and here we stayed.

Bruce played hunter-gathered and got out fly fishing kit, providing brown trout for breakfast.

The kids paddled and dug and splashed to their hearts content.

We read and chatted and drunk tea (and wine and whiskey), and in the afternoon braved the water for some swimming. It wasn't as cold as Ian's face suggests, but the current was pretty strong, and it was definitely hard work.

And there's not much more to say than that. We hardly moved from our pitch by the beach except for a little treasure hunting, and nothing exciting happened apart from relaxed fun. There was general happiness!

Things that are new

As Ian and I both have near perfect eye sight, someone else can take the genetic responsibility for this!

Sailing Club

We have rejoined the sailing season (it started when it was rather chilly and windy for little people), at open day season, so our first visit was to clear up ready for visitors. Which is always fun!

And then the next day was the open day. It was a little windy and Ian had flown off to more exciting places, so we didn't get to do any sailing, but we spent plenty of time in boats, even if they were on shore.

Thea asked constantly to go sailing, or at the very least to get into the motor boat, but lost her nerve when we got to the jetty. But we talked her in, and Nathaniel looked after her while we had a quick tour of the river.

It all went down hill from then - the next time we took the safety boat out, the motor cut out and couldn't be resucitated and I had to paddle them both back, upstream. Not much fun. So after that we stuck to the other main attraction of YRISC; tansy beetles. Please look them up because I don't have much to say except that, due to their total disinterest in roaming far from our little stretch of the Ouse, we are able to claim that we are safe guarding their uncertain future, and this will help us get grants to rebuild the clubhouse toilets! Here is one:

And here we are looking for one:

And after the tansy beetles have ceased to be interesting (not long), we play with the natural resources!

The next week was a bit better in terms of wind, and we all got out in the RS Slug. Hugh and I tried to teach ourselves about assymetric spinnakers in no wind and then we went out en famille. Thea was entirely convinced, but neither was she unconvinced.

That'll do for now.

And all this sailing malarky is very handy, as it qualifies us for providing interesting afternoons at school. This week we provided the entertainment by putting a topper in the yard and bringing in loads of sailing gear for Class Reception to try on. They seemed to have fun, and so did Class 1 and 2 who we indoctrinated later. And although it got rather silly that evening as Nathaniel and I dragged a topper on a trolley with only one wheel up the hill to berth it at a friends house while Ian rushed off to a meeting in Leeds, it was a good use of an afternoon and YRISC property!