NotSheep

We’ve just returned from Tim’s first trumpet lesson – his first here, not his first ever. He plays with his class in school in Germany, and arrived for the exchange with a pocket trumpet, which is seriously cute. I’ve never played trumpet or anything similar, so I wouldn’t know where to start, but I still want one

The lesson went very well. The tutor, M, is a young guy with lots of experience with a variety of brass instruments, as well as guitar and a few other things. He’s very relaxed, very pleasant, and obviously knows his stuff. Tim was his usual willing, cheerful self during the lesson, and M says he’s a joy to teach. I took a photo of them playing together, but it’s on my phone and my laptop doesn’t cooperate with my phone, so it will have to be uploaded later. Freddy and Jack came along too, and enjoyed the loud bits when M and Tim played as loudly as they could and the silly bits when they made their trumpets make rude noises. Freddy wants to learn to play drums; I’m not sure he needs anything that would allow him to be even louder…

Hm, what else have we done? On Saturday the oldest four(!) enjoyed their Chinese New Year party at GY. They ate stuff and played games and had a quiz during which George bravely allowed himself to be blindfolded and fed mystery foods which he had to identify. Unsurprisingly, none of them ate much at dinner. While they were out, Toby fell forwards over the back of Louie’s ride-on-push-along toy, and gave himself a very bloody nose. It looked quite scary, but it didn’t take him long to bounce back – within ten minutes he was annoying Jack, who was trying to play games on facebook.

On Sunday morning we woke to find that the world had turned white, and some of the boys were out in it as soon as we’d let them. Meanwhile I finished sorting out the dining-room/study, and now everything is organised and up-to-date and where it should be. There was a box full of jigsaw puzzles in clear plastic bags – some hadn’t been opened, but some had, and I didn’t know if all the pieces were there. Jack and I started to put one together, then other people came and joined in, and soon I was sitting back with a cup of tea and watching five children working on the same puzzle. We didn’t even know what the picture was supposed to be, but when we were about half-way through it, Tim came in and exclaimed that he had this puzzle in Germany. We managed to get it almost finished – only almost, because it turned out there was a piece missing.

Yesterday we did some skool in the morning, and then after lunch we somehow ended up listening to Weird Al Yankovic songs on-line. George does a mean rendition of the Ebay song (it might have been that which led us into the Weird Al session) and Barney and I were particularly amused by the Bohemian Polka, while the boys all thought Eat It was hilarious. Our listening was brought to a abrupt end when Jack’s friend A, who had arrived a few minutes earlier, realised that her DS was no longer in her giant teddy-bear’s nightcap (yeah, I know…) and she panicked, because she’d been swinging her giant teddy-bear around by his nightcap all up and down the street. Barney, George, Freddy, Tim and Jack immediately comprehended the enormity of the problem, and raced off to help her search – some of them without even stopping to put on coats. About twenty minutes later, they arrived back reporting that Barney had just found it, in the snow, but still working. I’m glad they all went to help; I don’t expect she’d have found it if she’d been looking alone, and while I might consider the loss of a DS to be more of a blessing, it was nice to see how they all responded so quickly and willingly in what they considered to be a crisis.

Now I’m off to have a cup of tea and think about getting something to eat, as I’m fading a bit here, and I can’t afford to do that – two drivers are required for the family taxi service tonight, and even that’s taking some planning.