I’ve managed to be ill for most of the time since Xmas day, first with a cold and then with some lingering cough virus which will neither bugger off, nor be quite bad enough to make me properly ill. So i’ve been asleep a good bit, coughing when awake and feeling slightly out of sorts. But since we were mainly just hunkered down for the holidays, it hasn’t really mattered, although i would have liked more energy to enjoy it.

We had a lovely New Year with The Beans, very much part of our tradition now and then we’ve been trying to rid the house of some clutter since, using bits of time i’ve been awake to clear out cupboards and crud holes. So far we’ve managed 15 bags of rubbish from F & M’s room, the bathroom, kitchen and my wardrobe. I think the skip we’ve hired which will hopefully make it here tomorrow is going to fill up nicely. The idea was to clear the garage into it – but i think we might have to get another one!

Today we made a start back to some gentle work and music practise; everyone is a bit rusty but i dare say it will all be okay in a few days. Fran was cross with fourth position on cello and Amelie knocked her G-string out of tune; guitar made Maddy cry – but still, that is why practise is important. After that Fran did some GP history and then told me all about Matilda and Stephen, Amelie wrote some sentences about what she’d learned from this amazing book, Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story which she got for Christmas and has been going on and on about. It has been lovely to hear her enthusiasm for it – the sentences were random but definitely proved she’d engaged with the topic and understood the sense of it all. Trying to think what Maddy was doing…. reading i think – and Josie was writing out words from a penguin book very industriously. Gosh, she is now in the term after her fifth birthday – official!!!

At this point everything stopped as i got a call from the gym coach to say they wanted to offer Amelie a trial place in the same squad that Fran has recently moved into. She has to get through a grading in April and prove she is up to standard for a competition in July or she’ll have to move down again but she is SO excited – even better, she was allowed to start tonight!!!! It means she has to drop the rhythmic class (although the coach hasn’t turned up for 2 weeks, so she has presumably dropped them) but Amelie is just SO excited! And it does make things easier in terms of how we organise our evenings. Spurred on by that, i called the local Taekwondo club and they are doing a trial for Maddy and Josie on Thursday and the classes run 200yards from gym at the same time, conveniently offset by 15 minutes at one end. So potentially rather perfect as Maddy is really keen on that as an idea and Josie is up for giving it a try.

After that we popped into town to look for sewing patterns for Fran, organise my birthday present, pay in some cheques and have some family time, then home for tea and then gym. Fran tends to get out of condition quite quickly but Amelie doesn’t so much and she fitted right in and looked like she had been there for months already. So pleased for her