Hecticness

I don't know if that is even a real word, but it sums up life round here lately!

There were more celebrations for A, and of course - more cake:

All went extremely well, the sleepover was very chilled, and it was nice that I had a friend here to hang out with too. The only annoying bit was the ice-rink inexplicably closing an hour early, so the girls only got about 20 minutes on the ice, but even that didn't seem to bother them too much (it bothered me - I had paid for them all!!)

It was great for both me and A to reconnect with our friends who came up from Glespin, we don't see them very often but they are important people to us. They ended up staying until Monday because of car problems, so we got them for an extra day :-)

Then, it was my birthday! A much quieter affair for me, we were booked to go to the ballet with the HE group on the actual day, so that worked out well. It was Cinderella, which we hadn't seen before, the set and costumes were pretty wild! At the pre-show talk we went to there was mention of influences from Andy Warhol and Vivienne Westwood, all very colourful and glamorous.

We seem to be doing loads of activities at the moment - A has started a new drama class at the big theatre in Inverness (as well as still going to the local one), and is keeping up with Guides, writing group, ice skating and guitar lessons. While I am continuing with Italian class and pilates, and have taken up Bhangra dancing and boxercise! Its all very exhausting, but in a good way ;-)

Our new HE schedule kind of went by the wayside for about a week, while all the celebrations were going on/being prepared for, but we are back on track with it all now. Granny has been away so A has had to put up with me ignoring her on my work days, which has been fine really. I give her an idea of what I'd like her to work on for the day (mostly stuff she has already chosen as areas of interest) and she gets on with it.

We found this fabulous book - well actually the librarian found it for us and ordered it in - as A had said she wanted to look at the different states in America. The book is so good we have decided to just work through it, covering American history/geography/politics/culture. We've also been playing this game to try and learn where the states are.

Something else we're quite taken with is the Brian Cox series 'Wonders of the Solar System', I had recorded this when it was on TV last year and we've just got around to watching it. Brilliant programme, we are big fans!