Highlights from Northern Ireland

Before my camera battery died...

Portstewart kite festival

Marisca is 8

Marisca is a lovely 8 year old.  She loves reading, baking, crafting, lego, dragons, unicorns, games, and being silly.

We had a unicorn party at the nearby crafty place (the Fox and the Magpie) with a great group of girls (plus Thomas).  Beautiful crafts were made.

Thomas was also star of the week for 'great mathsing', so Rosie bear came with us to the party!

Marisca is a cornet player

Marisca is learning to play the cornet.  She started last term, and we've been having a lot of fun together learning notes and how to play silly things and nice things.  She really likes her teacher and is enthusiastic about practicing at least half of the days of the week.  It's great.

She joined a beginner wind band a couple of months ago and they had their first performance(s) at a music day this weekend, amongst loads of other kids groups.

In their first performance Marisca got very severe stage fright, she wouldn't even enter the room when it was time to go on, and she sat out watching.  After an hour of talking together, she was very brave and went on stage the second time, and did a really great job!  She finished Hall of the Mountain King beaming about conquering her fear.  I was possibly crying quite a lot.

No photos of the performance, but here she is afterwards.  And, further down, trying out some of the instruments on offer in the 'have a go' room.  She went back to the flute 3 times... but is definitely a cornet player.

A little winter sun

Our children generally look lovely anyway, but a bit of winter sun helps...

Happy birthday Thomas

Happy birthday to my big, silly, curious, creative, kind, funny, five year old boy.

Thomas' first day

The children have just stopped school for half term, so I suppose it's time to write about Tom's first day at school.  No doubt influenced by 3 years of taking his sister to school, Thomas took the whole thing in his stride.  No arguments over uniform, normal breakfast, barely a hint of nerves when we got there, and when it was time for us to leave him, he just gave a wave and off we went.  

It's not really so easy getting pictures of Thomas doing sensible things at the moment...