Decisions, decisions

It's no wonder that time seems to fly by so quickly when you have to make various decisions so early. We are mid-way through a day of school visits with Abi. This is for a school she wont start until 2020 - that's ages away!! I know its important to plan ahead, but it feels very hard to look at a school and make an assessment as to whether it will suit in 3 years. That said, we chose our schools on the basis of reputation and recommendation and I think its been a useful process. The first, LWC, we went to alone knowing that location meant it was on the long list only. Unfortunately it was lovely and as both the kids will probably have friends going there, seemed like it would be feasible. The more I thought about it though the more I worried. It would mean they would have to board and what if that's not for them? More to the point, what if its not for me?!?! We re-considered, removed another one from our list because it was the same distance in the opposite direction, and today we are doing Pangbourne College and St Gabriels. I am definitely having to maintain an open mind for St Gabriels. Yes, it has a new Headmaster, new direction and the initial feedback has been positive.  However it's still single sex for Senior school and the facilities are no where near as good as the schools that are mixed sex and mixed boarding / day pupils. We'll see. It will have to do a bloody good job after this morning where we went to Pangbourne (in the snow) to see lovely warm comfy boarding houses (all girls, even the day girls get a shared room with their own bed for occasional sleep overs / day space. To see two girls sitting at the shared kitchen table in their onesies eating chocolates in between decorating their corridors for the Christmas decoration challenge was enough to sell it to Abi. Added to that to hear that she would be able to ride as a main sport 4 days a week in the summer and compete in the school team without having to actually own her own horse and we might have well have signed there and then. Tell this to Izzy and she will be convinced as well - it will be her Mallory Towers dream come true!

In between all of this we have had Abi's birthday present - her very first driving lesson! Despite the weather doing it's best to postpone it, we turned up to a very bleak Racecourse carpark yesterday lunchtime with a very excited little girl. Izzy was much less excited - the thought of sitting in a car for an hour while her sister drove round in circles wasn't (funnily enough) that motivational, particularly as I made her get dressed for it!  Abi jumped in the car and after a lengthy safety brief pulled away and then proceeded to navigate the various cones and bollards. At the end of the lesson she came away beaming with her instructor saying she was an natural - of course - like father, like daughter. She'd got up to 20mph, changed gears, pulled away, indicated and had an absolute blast.

This week is the last few days of the school term (already!) and today Izzy was up before Glenn or Abi, excited about the prospect of snow and today's school trip to the theatre. She's a bit gutted their house has Dick Whittington instead of The Borrowers, but it's still a trip on the coach and a slightly different day. As far as schools are concerned she just wants to go where the '4Square' girls are going. Tavie, Krishna, CoCo and Izzy are joined at the hip and want to do everything together. Every break they play 4Square (some kind of netball game??) and they are a tight little gang - all for one and one for all. In reality, it's likely they will all being going to completely different schools for a variety of reasons, but in the meantime long may their friendship last. Izzy is super social in school but at home still loves to curl up somewhere with her Kindle or iPad and a ball of blue-tac or play-putty - she'll be occupied for hours. She is the easiest child in many respects even if I do worry that sometimes we've all been in one room of the house with her somewhere else and we haven't seen her for hours - she's not bothered though. I'm glad that Abi has her time down at Angie's because it allows Izzy to take the centre stage at home a bit more and be the centre of attention.

Right, got to go do the next visit - they'll need to knock it out of the park to beat the riding and dorm rooms!

Izzy practising hair styles for the 2018 Wedding of the Year...

Not sure this will make the cut!