Thursday photo #239

This time of year creeps up on you doesn’t it? One minute, it’s November and everything is calming down after half term. The next, you’re into the throws of show rehearsals, sorting out nativity costumes and attending Christmas events.

Nights out

It is unusual these days for my husband and I to go anywhere without the children. Occasionally one of us will have an evening out, but going out together is particularly rare. This week has been the exception.

On Saturday, we all headed to the Eastnor Land Rover Christmas Experience. Whilst Father Christmas was there and the event was definitely aimed at children, it was fun for the adults as well. We both drove a Land Rover around an off road track and over obstacles whilst the children sat in the back. Afterwards, I got the train to Birmingham for a Christmas evening out with some other bloggers. It was a very civilised dinner at a hotel, and lovely to have our version of a work Christmas do.

Monday brought an even less common occurrence, when my husband and I went out for the evening together. We went to see The Nightingales at Malvern Theatres. I often mention how lucky we are to have such an incredible theatre close by, but we really don’t make the most of it as we should. Ruth Jones stars in The Nightingales and seeing her on stage at such an intimate venue was brilliant. It was also nice to go out as a couple and have a few hours break from just being mum and dad.

The problem with maths

Last year, Libby’s teacher mentioned that she was struggling with her maths. I know she finds it difficult but at her most recent parents’ evening, we were told that her maths wasn’t too bad. Recently though, she’s had a maths test which she struggled with. She was telling me the numbers she had to add together and it should have been easy, but she couldn’t get her head around it.

I’m in a similar position with Lia, who came home today and told me that she’d got two out of ten in a maths test. When I asked what she’d found difficult, she told me she’d actually got ten out of ten. So whether it was her test result or her ability to talk about numbers, something’s going wrong.

But the problem with maths is that there’s no way for parents to help because we have no idea what they’re doing at school. If the girls are doing maths tests, I’d really like to know what was in the test and where they went wrong. I’m already considering getting extra maths tuition for Libby because I’d hate her to grow up thinking she couldn’t do it. For now though, we have to wait until the next parents’ evening and hope they’re getting on ok without our help.

A professional photographer was on site at Eastnor Land Rover at the weekend and took this fabulous photo of the girls toasting marsh mallows. As you can see, it wasn’t my husband’s finest moment. He stepped up to help Lia who wasn’t getting her marsh mallow close enough to the fire. I love the look of disappointment on Lia’s face when the marsh mallow went up in flames. And I can’t help smiling at Libby’s full on belly laugh at the fact it didn’t happen to her!