My little stars, back at school

It feels like forever since I last wrote a post just about the children and it's probably time I rectified that.

Both children were excited about going back to school. They don't tend to see their friends outside of school  as we are relatively far from it. Giddiness of the highest order ensued on the first day back, with Missy Woo running round squealing and flinging her arms around her friends that she hadn't seen for all of six weeks. Monkey, of course, was as cool as a cucumber about seeing his friend but he was happy to return.

Monkey's main reason for looking forward to the new term was having a brand new teacher to the school as his class teacher this year. Of course, for him, it's a big step as he has moved into Year 3 and therefore into the juniors. After his first couple of days, he started mentioning Mission Impossible and we ended up "singing" the tune on his way home. I wondered what it was and last week, I finally found out. His new teacher invited all the parents to sit in on a lesson at the start of the day. As the children were settling in for the day, the teacher suddenly set a recording off and the children went hither and thither putting things away. It's his way of getting them to tidy up! The aim is to do it quicker every time, and they are all disappointed if they don't do it quicker than last time. I am seriously considering downloading Mission Impossible for use at home! Looking around the class, I realised how much they have grown up in the 3 years they have been at school and their new teacher has them eating out of his hand. He's going to have a fantastic year.

On the curriculum for him this year is learning the ukulele. A teacher comes in once a week to teach a whole class. Monkey brought his new* (*second-hand) ukulele home for the first time last week. He'd had the sum total of one lesson. He thought he was an expert and proceeded to share his new-found talent with all of us. I sent him upstairs to play instead but that didn't do much - we just heard "strum, strum, strum, strum" all the time. He's quite keen - I keep coming downstairs and finding the ukulele out of its case on the floor of the living room - but I'm dreading all the practice. Don't laugh - apparently, ukulele lessons are becoming increasingly popular in schools, so it could be coming your way soon. Oh well, at least it is not a recorder.

Missy Woo is, however, the one who has amazed me. During the school holidays, she suddenly decided she wanted to write a poem so she set about doing so. She asked for little bits of help with spellings and words to use, but on the whole, I left her to it. As she prepared to return to school, she insisted on making sure she took her poem in to show her new teacher (who was, of course, Monkey's teacher last year).

After her first day back, she told me that her teacher had said she could read out her poem at the next celebration assembly they have on Friday afternoons, and asked if I was going. Thankfully, I was as the first one was after their first full week and as a parent with children in both infant and juniors, I can basically go whenever I want. She told me she would have to write it out neatly as the teacher had said.

Come the assembly, both children took their certificates in from the summer reading challenge they had been doing at the library over the holidays and after they showed them, the headteacher held her back and started explaining about the poem that Missy Woo wrote.

What I didn't know was that Missy Woo had learnt her poem off by heart to recite to the whole school. It was her own idea and I have no idea when she did it, but she did. Not only that, my little 6 year old girl (OK, not so little - she looks at least a year older, if not two) stood there and recited in a clear and confident voice, the whole of her poem and  received a huge round of applause from all the children, staff and present.

I don't think I've ever been quite so blown away by her. I had no idea she'd learnt it off by heart - of course, she wrote it so should know what's in it but all the same, she was fantastic. And for that, she was unsurprisingly awarded the first Star of the Week trophy of the new school year. I was so proud of her.

And just so Monkey didn't feel left out, his class was class of the week too, so we had double the reason to celebrate. As we were going away straight after school, we ended up lugging the trophy to Coventry with us - and Missy Woo took it upon herself to show the trophy to just about anyone who was passing, let alone ask what it was for.

Summer holidays already feel like a month ago. Routines have been re-established, friendships rekindled, reading books grudgingly read and avoided where possible. We are definitely back at school, with lots of exciting things to look forward to.

Meal Planning Monday - a finally getting back to normal edition!

We've been away for at least part of three of the last four weekends and with going back to school, I feel like I'm fighting just to stay on top of things. This week should be quieter - although I have parents evening on Wednesday, a possible night out on Thursday and the usual things that the kids do. But the weekend - that's free, hurrah! No packing, tidying up before I go, travelling, washing when I get home and all that other stuff. Phew.

I've tried to go for easyish stuff all week and I'm trying a recipe from a book I'm reviewing at the weekend, so I'll tell you how that goes later. I will finally FINALLY get to make Moroccan chicken this week - events have conspired against me in previous weeks!

Here, then, is our week.

Monday - One pot mushroom and potato curry
Tuesday - One pot Moroccan chicken
Wednesday - Spicy fish stew
Thursday -  Slow cooker chilli
Friday -  Cauliflower cheese crumble
Saturday -  Spicy pork meatloaf

Don't forget that the lovely Mrs M has the Meal Planning Monday linky over at hers. Bon appetit - what's on your menu this week? 

Our weekend at the Paralympics

Having been lucky enough to secure some tickets for the Paralympics having run the gauntlet of the London 2012 site and won, we planned a weekend down in London with the children. We were all excited about going to Olympic Park and the children were full of chatting about it to their friends when they went back to school.

We decided to stay over down there, rather than stay with family as we wanted to be there early. Luckily, I managed to find reasonably accommodation a few miles from a Central line station with a car park. We collected the children an hour early from school on the Friday and set off down south.

We had heard how warm it was but still, we arrived early evening at our hotel and it was very warm. After rearranging the room so that the children were in one end of the room, we finally got them to bed but Monkey would NOT go to sleep. However, once I tried to sleep, I knew how he felt. Once I finally got to sleep, I woke with a start about two hours later and ended up awake for an hour. Four hours sleep when you are about to be walking around a lot is not a good night's sleep. The 6.30 alarm should have felt early but I was already awake!

Having left our hotel at 7.30, we were on a tube into Stratford within 15 minutes. For a Saturday morning, the tube was busy, full of other people on their way to Olympic Park. On arrival at Stratford, we followed the crowd - and the Games Makers - who were brilliant, especially with the children. (Note to companies - when you treat customers like human beings, they respond positively to you.) We breezed through security, and there we were at the entrance to Olympic Park. A good enough excuse to take this picture.

It was already hot so we took it gradually. Breakfast at the golden arches seemed inevitable to fill up hungry tummies (even though they had had things to eat before we left) and after our filling our water bottles and a quick look in the megastore, we wandered to our first session - athletics in the Olympic Stadium. This was our view one way.

And this was the other.

Thankfully, we were in the shade which at least kept us cool! In terms of British interest, this was a quiet session. I think there were only 2 or 3 British athletes involved and only one qualified for a final that evening. It didn't matter though - there was lots to see for the children. If you were ever worried about taking children to an athletics meet, don't - there were lots of different things going on and none of it requiring your attention for too long. The range of athletes was broad too - there were people in wheelchairs racing and throwing, men with visual impairments doing the triple jump, runners with cerebral palsy - the only thing we were missing were any amputees. We saw a number of different finals and we had lots of victory ceremonies - some from the night before and some winners from the session itself.

It was my first live athletics meeting and it was pretty special. The track looks a lot bigger than you would think - 400 m seems a long long way to sprint from close up. I was completely in awe of all of the athletes.

Despite having tickets for the tennis that started before the athletics finished, we stayed to the bitter end, which means we caught the victory ceremony for the women's javelin F37/38 final with the flowers presented by Clare Balding who got the biggest cheer of the morning.

By the time we came out of the stadium, it was very hot, very busy and we had a long walk ahead of us across the park to Eton Manor where the wheelchair tennis was taking place. We bought ice creams to keep us cool on the way but it was still boiling and there was very little shade for the 20 minute or so walk. When we got there, the bronze medal match that was on was deep in the final set - in fact, by the time we were let in, one of the players was serving for the match and subsequently won it! Our seats were very high up - so high that we could only just make it to our seats in time for play to restart in breaks between games. The view was worth it though.

We also had great views of the Velodrome and other Olympic Park venues, as well as the Shard, the North Greenwich arena and in the distance in the other direction, Monkey spotted Leyton Orient! Eton Manor is a bizarre venue really as it's only attached to the park by a bridge that crosses a major road.

There were three gold medal matches on, one after the other. First was the quad singles, featuring the Israeli player Noam Gershony who had beat Peter Norfolk earlier in the week. And he was unbelievably talented and fairly quickly won the match against his American opponent. After his victory ceremony, we had the women's doubles featuring the legendary Dutch player Esther Vergeer, who is on a winning run of 470 singles matches. Because the players weren't quad players, you could see the difference in play as the ball was being hit much harder and being doubles, it was more quickly paced. There was drama when midway through the set, the umpire suddenly stopped play as one of the ball girls fainted and had to be carried away on a stretcher. I did say it was hot! Although we were in direct sunlight at first, the sun disappeared behind the stand and put us once again in the shade.

Although the match bounced around a bit between the two Dutch pairs, the match was again a fairly straightforward victory for Vergeer and Buis. The victory ceremony followed, presented by Tessa Jowell wearing what looked like slippers from a distance but turned out to be dark pink trainers; interesting choice with the smart dress she was wearing. And the bronze medallists were British, meaning it was not a clean sweep for the Dutch!

The final match was the men's singles, contested by a French amputee and a Japanese player. These guys racked the hitting power even further and there were some breathtaking shots. It was getting dark by this time and the children getting bored but thankfully, it turned out once again to be fairly simple and a win for the Japanese.

At the end of the tennis, we headed out of Eton Manor and back to Stratford Gate. However, we hadn't got very far when we noticed a sign to say that the Basketball Arena was letting anyone with a ticket to a valid event in so we decided to go and catch up with some wheelchair rugby. A bonus sport!

We caught the last few minutes of Belgium v France then the first quarter of GB v Sweden! We decided to leave after that because the children were shattered and we had a long walk ahead of us back to the station. On the way back, we got a shot of the stadium all lit up.

As we walked back to the station, we passed a bar at Westfield just as Oscar Pistorius's race started so we stopped to watch that too. Perfect!

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was nearly 11. The children went to sleep very quickly and so did we! We had another busy day ahead of us but I was awake early again - to find Monkey approaching Missy Woo's bed with her baby Pom toy in his hand. After seeing me, he just placed it on her bed and got back in his own bed. I thought he was just going to lie there but I soon realised he was asleep. We got up, showered and packed the cases before Missy Woo woke up. We had to wake Monkey up!

Fortified this time by a full breakfast at the hotel, we set back off for the Olympic Park. This time, we just had park access tickets and there was no chance of getting into another venue for free as there was little left on - just the 7 a side football and the finals of the wheelchair rugby. Again, it was boiling. We shopped in the megastore and Missy Woo wanted to go to the Mascot House. I took Monkey to watch the Marathon at Park Live but it was too hot - and no shade! Then we headed to an exhibition where you could try the wheelchairs they use in basketball, the hand bikes and a wheelchair obstacle course.

Blurry because he was so fast!

Then, we wandered up to the Orbit - the only major piece of shade in the whole park and ate lunch, listening to the rehearsals for the Closing Ceremony, so we were treated, in part, to something of a Coldplay concert. They announced that the park was closing in less than an hour so we headed back out to the tube to start the long journey home.

It was a brilliant weekend. Paralympic sport is so incredibly skilful, it takes your breath away and we were very lucky to see not one, but three, sports. We also feel very fortunate to have been in the Olympic Park on the last day that it was open to the public for the 2012 Games. It is something we will all remember forever and the children will be able to tell their children and their grandchildren - we went to see the London 2012 Paralympics.I love that they see disabled person as different rather than helpless - fantastic when you consider that they don't have much experience or contact with disabled people in their everyday lives. It has taught them that nothing is impossible if you try.

For that reason alone, the Olympics and Paralympics really have inspired a generation.

Meal Planning Monday - a quickly cobbled together edition!

Yes, this is me typing as fast as I can as I'm writing this mid-preparations to go to London to the Paralympics. As we're not back until late on Sunday, I thought - stupidly - I'd get a quick meal plan done and then I got sent an Ocado voucher so I've even done the shop to be delivered Monday afternoon.

Don't expect anything fantastic from this - I'm away with the children again on Friday night and not back until late on Saturday so that's another two meals not on the plan.

So, quickly, here's our week

Monday - Moroccan chicken one-pot
Tuesday - Slow cooked pork shoulder with cider and parsnips
Wednesday - Pad Thai with prawns
Thursday - Cheesy lentils
Friday - not here
Saturday - not here
Sunday - Roast chicken (possibly)

Don't forget Mrs M has more Meal Planning Monday entries. What are you having this week?

Preston - a city in cake!

If you live in the north of England, you might have heard the expression "once every Preston Guild". If you haven't, it of course means very infrequently. This is because the Preston Guild, the only Guild merchant still celebrated in the UK, only happens every 20 years with the main festivities occurring in the first week of September. It's an ancient celebration, believed to date back to 1179.

This year's Guild - the first one in the twenty first century and the first since Preston was made a city in 2002 for the queen's Golden Jubilee - included a Vintage Guild, curated by Wayne Hemingway which included a food festival in Winckley Square. As part of that, bakers from around the region were invited to build Preston landmarks in cake for the Preston Cake City project.

When I first heard about it, I never thought I'd get involved. I don't consider myself an expert baker - I'm way more confident than I used to be and my cakes taste good but never look that fancy. I mean, I only first covered a cake with sugarpaste properly last Christmas!

But then I got collared by some of the ladies I know through Clandestine Cake Club. Some of them had thought of baking a cake and had chosen this building. It is the control building at Preston Docks from where the swingbridge is controlled at the entrance to the marina.

When I was first asked, I looked at it. A pyramid. What? So I said it wasn't anything I was any good at. I got told that they just needed people to bake cakes, make buttercream, etc, and found myself agreeing to do it.

Over the next few weeks, we had a number of meetings to work out a plan how we would do it and who would do what. Thankfully, Linzi who was organising us, got her hubby to draw a plan so we knew what size to make everything. The cake was based on 20cm square madeira cakes. I was allocated the job of doing the top part. Yes, the pyramid. What?

As the cakes were to be delivered on Sunday morning, the bottom half of the cake was built on Friday and on Saturday, I met Linzi and another lady, Hazel, at Linzi's house to finish it off. This is how the cake looked when I arrived.

There is another layer that is not visible underneath the grey already decorated with brick coloured sugarpaste, windows and doors. The blue strut was there for measuring and is actually Blackpool rock!

Our first task was to cut a small square and cover it with more brick coloured sugarpaste. Being the old hand that I was (!), I helped her cut the cake to size and explained how to cover it with the sugarpaste. That just left the pyramid to cut. First I had to cut another square to the proportion on the plan and actually cut it straight which is harder than it sounds! Then, Ian (Linzi's husband) suggest I cut two opposite side to make a Toblerone type shape then the other two. We had a pyramid - which to my eye, looked slightly wonky. Never mind, I was going to cover it with grey sugarpaste.  I did this by rolling out the paste to the required thickness, cutting it in half and laying the pieces along the edges of the pyramid over the apex. Then I blended the edges together. After pressing down with a nifty tool to make a tiled effect, this was the result.

Then we had to get the cakes on the top. The square cake had to have a hole put in the middle to get it in place then my masterpiece (ahem) went on top). As you can see, Hazel had added windows in blue sugarpaste and in the meantime, Ian had cut the big sticks of rock to size.

Phew, it looked OK! Now it was down to details. I cut some licorice to size and it was stuck to the grey sugarpaste with edible glue to make the roof windows. And my final job was to cut some cherry laces to size and stick that to the edge of my little pyramid. This proved to be the hardest task of all as the laces wanted to curl up and pinged off the cake. After holding it with as many hands as possible, we stuck it with cocktail sticks whilst the glue went off and eventually, it stuck down. With the addition of some sticks for the railings, we were done!

The finished cake was delivered to Preston the next morning and placed on an edible map. Over 40 cakes were brought in total. We arrived as a family to see the finished result, just as they were putting the last few cakes out and completing the cityscape.

Once the cakes were all laid out, all of the cakes were introduced to the crowd and the bakers asked to make themselves known. Each baker and team voted for their favourite cake and a Baker's Choice announced by the town crier once they had randomly had a fitness instructor do a routine with the assembled throng. For the last part, once the cakes that were being taken home were being removed, the rest of the cakes were cut up and given away to anyone that wanted it.

In the above photo, you can see the two winners - on the left, the Black Bull inn and next to it, St Walberge's  (with the grey spire) which came a close second and was baked by someone else from cake club, who did it all by herself. The detailing on it was fabulous - it was my favourite cake.

This was a great event and all the cakes were amazing - it just goes to show what you can do with cake. Our cake fared very well and I got lots of positive comments about it when talking to people at the event. If you would like to see a full set of photos from the event, you can see them here.

Finally, a huge thanks to Dewlay, Artisan Foodworks, Foodlink Lancashire  and the Egg Man Mick Brooks for donating various ingredients, to Linzi's husband Ian for drawing up the designs, the other bakers Sue, Carla, Jo, Hazel and last but not least Linzi who kept us all in line and organised us to such good effect. 

It was quite some effort! I'd definitely do one again, although I'm not quite ready to do one by myself just yet. 

(We were provided as a team with some ingredients by the above mentioned suppliers in return for a mention.)

We have reached that point

These last six weeks have flown by and there is but a day left of the summer holidays - a day we are spending together as a family, meeting my sister and her husband who are on holiday in North Yorkshire.  I think the Olympics and Paralympics have distracted us this year and that's helped the weeks to pass quickly.

I've enjoyed them being home but over the last few days, the children have become more restless, argumentative and generally giddy. I think that's a sign they are rested and are itching to get back to school. Both of them are as excited as anything about school. They miss their friends as only one or two other children from school live close to us. The friends they play with here are getting a bit boring and quite a few have been on holiday towards the end of the holidays. Missy Woo always struggles because there are many more boys than girls to play with - and then, two of the girls she played with regularly have moved house and beyond her reach, which has reduced the field considerably.

They started getting a bit more tetchy and argumentative over the weekend and then yesterday, I took them shopping, going for a treat breakfast first. I thought that would settle them first - it usually does, and they are usually quite good around a supermarket these days - but faced with a quiet supermarket with extra wide aisles, all they did was run everywhere and screech repeatedly. I lost count of the number of times I had to say their names and tell them to stop. My stress levels were through the roof by the checkout and I heard myself saying to the checkout operator, when she asked when they went back to school, "I can't wait for them to go back." I realised it was the first time I'd said it all holiday.

See that right there? That was my tether and I was at the end of it. Thankfully, after the riot act was read to them in the car on the way home, they helped to put away the shopping without a single word of complaint, then asked to go out to play and helpfully stayed out of my way for the next hour.

Yes, the novelty has truly worn off for them and school seems an exciting prospect. Both are looking forward to having new teachers - and Monkey moves into Juniors and his first male teacher, who is new to the school as well as him. Both have new school bags, which are apparently "amazing" as they have internal pockets. My children are easily pleased.

And me? Much as I love them and the summer we have had, I would like the house to stay tidy for longer than five minutes. And it's time for them to go - I think in an ideal world, going back yesterday would have been the ideal scenario.

That first cup of tea on Wednesday morning is going to taste as sweet as anything. Although the house is going to be eerily quiet for a few hours.

Meal Planning Monday - the back-to-school Paralympic edition!

Yes, this week was meant to be a quiet one, with the children back in school on Wednesday. That was until we managed to get tickets for the Paralympics on Saturday, morning and afternoon and a pass to the park on Sunday. This means we will be away Friday night, Saturday night and late back Sunday, so in terms of meal planning, they are out of the window.

 Then, on top of that, I realised that my sister was coming up to North Yorkshire this fortnight for a holiday. Talking to her last week, we worked out that Tuesday would be the best day to meet up as the children are still off school and husband is off too. So that probably throws Tuesday out of the window too.

This week is becoming a bit of a write off really, isn't it? Anyway, I still have a plan. And oh yes, one of them was from last week. (You hate me, don't you?)

Don't get excited then - this is our week.

Monday - Pesto crusted fish
Tuesday - keeping free
Wednesday - Jacket potatoes with ham and honey-mustard slaw
Thursday - Slow cooker lasagne
Friday - away
Saturday - away
Sunday - away

I'm sure you're all making plans to get back to normal this week, so head on over to Mrs M's to see what others with fuller meal plans than this are doing.