Review of 2018

Well, here we are again, a week into December and, this year, we are completely disorganised for Christmas! We still need to get a tree, decorate the house and do our Christmas shopping.  However, we couldn't not do a Christmas blog this year so here it is:

We spent New Year with our friends in Durham, visiting Tim Peake's spacecraft, ice-skating, and playing Trivial Pursuit!  The remainder of January and February was fairly quiet, although we spent a lovely few days in Bristol with Fee's Mum and Dad, where we enjoyed meeting up with family for a nice pub meal.

March was a month of very mixed emotions.  Sadly, Fee's dad passed away, after a short illness.  He died peacefully at home, and Fee, her mum and her brother were all able to be there with him for his last few days. His funeral was a lovely celebration of his life and I'm sure he was smiling down on us as we remembered lots of happy memories.  A week later, we watched proudly (albeit a bit emotionally) as Lucy and Adam starred as Mrs Sowerberry and The Artful Dodger in their drama school production of Oliver. They were both fantastic and it was a great show!


At the beginning of April we set off for La Plagne, France, on our first family ski holiday.  The children had been looking forward to this for a long time, as they had both done some skiing on dry slopes and artificial snow. We arrived to find freshly fallen snow, a beautiful modern apartment and a reasonable weather forecast for the week. The kids were booked into ski school every morning, so Fee and Bri used this time to explore the harder slopes (and the mountain top cafés) on their own.  We had (naïvely) thought the afternoons would be a bit more relaxed, whilst the kids were gaining confidence.  However, from about the second day, the kids were zooming ahead and waiting for us at the bottom of the lift!  All in all, it was a fantastic week, and will definitely be something we do again.

The summer term saw us all competing in our various sports.  Bri entered the London 10k running race again, and ran 'alongside' Mo Farah and Seb Coe, as well as Fee's Auntie and cousin.   Adam continued to play cricket and moved up to playing hard ball.  Watching him and his friends try to run with all their gear on was quite entertaining at first, but they soon got the hang of it and did really well in their league, with Adam being awarded the Player's player trophy for the season.
Fee and her canoe polo team entered the Hull International again and were very pleased with a top 10 finish. And Lucy's cheer leading team came back with two silver medals from the County Championships.




July also marked the 10th birthday of Fee's Funky French business so we celebrated with a garden party for a selection of Fee's former pupils.

The end of term was busy as ever, with Adam going off on a school residential trip to Norfolk and Lucy getting all dressed up for her end of Middle School prom.





For our summer holiday, we were fortunate to be able to stay in a friend's house in South West Normandy.  Having no wifi for a week was liberating, and we all read lots of books.  We also visited Mont St Michel, went on cycle rides, visited a biscuit factory and walked to waterfalls.  We drove home via Paris and spent a great 2 days sightseeing and, of course, climbed the Eiffel Tower.

 In September, Lucy started Upper School and Adam went into year 7 at the middle school.  Both seem to be enjoying school so far this term.  Adam has taken on the responsibility of being a Junior Assistant Network Administrator (JANA), which means he's responsible for delivering the i-pads and laptops to different classes around the school. We're not sure whether his motivation for becoming a JANA stemmed from his love of IT, or his dislike of assemblies (he gets to miss them to carry out the role)!
Lucy has been busy practising for her school production of School of Rock. She has had several all day rehearsals and has 4 shows this week so will be pretty tired by the time Sunday arrives, but she's absolutely loved every minute so far, which is great.


The majority of Bri and Fee's time for the past 4 or 5 months has been taken up with planning and overseeing the installation of our new kitchen. We started by knocking down the wall between our kitchen and dining room, which has really opened up the space.  We spent a long time planning what we wanted, and getting quotes from various kitchen companies, before deciding on the handleless design you can see in the picture. The kitchen should've been finished at the end of October but, with various issues, (mainly mistakes with measurements etc) it has taken an extra month to get everything sorted, and has caused a great deal of frustration. Luckily, it is now all done (we just need to add some colour with a blind and cooker splashback) and we're really pleased with it.  It's now all ready for us to entertain the family at Christmas!

In other news, Bri has started training to be a volunteer for the Mid Shires Search and Rescue Organisation which specialises in finding missing persons and assists in emergency civil situations. He's yet to attend a proper search but is enjoying his training so far.  Fee has taken on more hours teaching in her main school and dropped her second school, due to the logistical issues and pressures of working for 2 different schools.  However, she has also been doing some work in a local lower school, interpreting and providing 1:1 support for a German girl with very little English.  This is proving to be very rewarding and Fee has enjoyed trying to remember all her German (although the Viking day vocabulary was a bit of a challenge!)

We hope you all have a lovely Christmas and get to spend time with family and friends. Happy Christmas, Happy New Year and hope to catch up with you soon.

Love from The McCuskers. x