Weekend Round Up

Well, Emily's feeling much better, so she went off to ballet on Saturday with no trouble. She enjoyed the lesson, although Jon and I have been left fuming by her teacher's brilliant organisational skills. This show they're doing - parents were asked to inform the teacher which group they'd like their child to be in (to be with friends, etc) and told that she would do her very best to accommodate everyone's choices. Most parents apparently didn't bother saying anything (so it's not as if she was juggling too many conflicting requests), but Jon did let her know that Emily had asked to be with K and her other friends, and K's mum asked for her to be with Emily. Teacher said to Jon that that would be no problem at all. This was a week or two ago. So, Saturday, the children are told the groups they're to be in. Yep, you've guessed it. Emily is in "the blue group". ALL of her friends, every single one of them, are in "the red group". So they will be perfoming on different nights, attending different rehearsals and, after Easter, even attending different lessons as she is splitting the lessons in two. What the hell was the point of even asking for preferences then?? Makes me so cross. Hrrrmpph. Mind you, I think we're crosser than Emily is. She just shrugged her shoulders and informed us "Well, I'll just make some new friends in this group." And I'm sure she will. But that's not the point!

Oh well, at least it means her lessons after Easter will be earlier in the morning, so our Saturdays won't be cut in two any longer.

On Mother's Day Emily gave me some beautiful hand made cards, a Mum bookmark and a lovely new wallet. And lots of hugs :-)) Also on Sunday we waved my Mum and Dad off to the St Bees caravan for a few weeks, and we also investigated the loft trying to find the boxes for my myth and magic collection, the pieces of which are far filthier than I thought they were. Hmmm. Will have to brush up on my pewter cleaning skills before I can sell them, I think! Emily experimented on a few of them on Sunday afternoon, trying to find out what would clean them best. Does that count as science?

For the rest of Sunday, Jon and Emily followed a watercolour DVD by Frank Clarke - they loved it and had a ball! Here are their efforts, Emily's first:

Followed by Jonathan's:
We also splashed out and joined the Society of Artists as art materials are costing us a fortune at the moment and they have some of the cheapest membership prices I've found, plus other benefits. Jon and Emily are out at art class this evening - Emily had to come home half way through last week's one 'cos she was poorly still, but hopefully she'll make it through this one. When this course is finished (think there's another three or four to go) we'll look into private lessons with Gary for both Jon and Emily. They're bothing having such fun with it, it would be a shame to let it drop.

While the artists were having fun at the weekend, I listed sixty more items of stock on ebay (but still haven't touched our new online shop, naughty, naughty business woman that I am) and wrote to some more of the endless deadlines. We got a new magazine contract confirmed this morning, and the press agency renewed theirs, so I have another fourteen deadlines to pencil into the calendar between now and summer. Hey ho.

This morning Emily worked on some maths and English while I wandered around cursing myself for having got up so late. Hate it when that happens, it just throws the whole day. This afternoon she played on Civilisation for ages and then spent a long time creating some beautiful computer art. The latest version of Dazzle is on sale at the moment here, down to £9.99 from £49.99 in case anyone's interested. Emily also spent some time discussing with me and Jon what she wants to do over the next week or two. Because Jon and I have so got so much work to sort out, we're going to take it in turns to "educate" and we're going to adopt a lucky dip system, apparently. Emily's written loads and loads of subjects on bits of folded paper, and whatever she draws out will be what's done at any particular time. Should be interesting - it's been a bit of a faff making sure we've got something in mind for whatever she picks, but it sounds like it could work well for the moment at least, giving one of us adults at a time some breathing space to work.

Tomorrow we've got the return visit to the doctors for Emily, then Hazel and Romy are coming round to play, then we'll be off to yoga where it's Emily's first exam night. She doesn't seem too worried - if it was me, I'd be a nervous wreck by now!