Ballet Frenzy

Last night Emily and I went to see the Chisinau National Ballet perform Nutcracker in Grimsby. It's the first "real ballet" Emily's even seen, and she was spellbound throughout. It was a fantastic performance, we really enjoyed it. I've promised Emily we can go to see the next ballet that peforms nearby, but having checked it out this morning it appears that ballet is a bit thin on the ground "round these parts". Oh well. We may be back to York sooner than we expected to see this same company perform Swan Lake in early March, but other than that it could be a long wait.

Emily's spent all morning researching the Chisinau ballet and making posters from various nutcracker ballet images she's found on google. She's gone off to her ballet class now still talking nineteen to the dozen about it and itching to tell her teacher what she saw.

Yesterday we did lots more maths and then had a break for a lesson in Mouse Anatomy of all things, ably assisted by one of the kittens (still haven't discovered which) leaving a half eaten and decapitated mouse on the doorstep. Those of a squeamish disposition should look away now.....but since its innards were all neatly laid out in a little trail, we had a good old look and managed to identify most bits (we think).

Emily also soaked and planted the dried flower seed/stone her yoga teacher gave her, and excitedly examined the contents of the gemstone tumbler which has finally (hooray!!!) finished. She spent an hour happily choosing which finished stones she wanted for what, and used lots of jewellery findings (provided by Gramps, since the kit was woefully inadequate in that department) to make several rings, keyrings, and lots and lots of pendants. Here's a photo of some of the finished articles:

Meanwhile, whilst we were out being wowed by the ballet, Jon was having a technology frenzy. Yesterday he somehow managed to set up our new cordless mouse, cordless keyboard and extremely posh and verrrry large flat screen monitor, to replace the monitor that gave up the ghost earlier in the week. Considering setting up anything new in this house is a major operation as you have to clear desks/space first before you can even get to the old stuff, let alone replace it, that was pretty good going. Not content with that though, he also managed to clear off our entire floor to ceiling shelving unit, place and set up the new hifi system we got for Christmas, get it working, and replace everything on the unit. It had been sat in the box untouched since Christmas becuase the propsect of getting it out was just too daunting - but there, it's up now. Better go and make use of it then!