Saturday I worked Saturday morning, which had led us to decide to make Sunday our day trip up to The Salmon’s Au Revoir Party Weekend but a text invitation from the McM’s on Friday meant we ended up going to their’s on Saturday late afternoon and staying over on Saturday night. Am now regretting not leaving straight from work and making it to the party for an hour or so before going to McM’s (pronouced MacEms) so we could have caught up with all the people we missed seeing 🙁
Work was fine, Yvonne, who thinks it’s outrageous I’m not being paid for Chatterbooks gave me two hours to spend time preparing for it. She’s lovely 🙂 Another Mum I’d have loved to have had, she does so much for her two daughters and two (soon to be three) grandchildren. So I enjoy the little doses of adopted daughter-ness she bestows on me at work :).
Came home, had lunch and a very long bath while reading Chris Evan’s autobiography, which I’m really enjoying despite not being a huge fan of his. Am definitely changing my opinion of him though – maybe people should spend time getting to know people properly rather than making a snap decision about who they think they are or listening to other people’s ideas?….
Then we packed the car up and headed off. A really nice straightforward journey til the very last five minutes when we made what should have been a tiny diversion to collect Chloe from a friend’s house, the sat nav threw a complete fit about it and we ended up doing a huge loop round before getting back on track 😆
Finally arrived, fortified with tea, followed by wine / beer and snacks (but we did have to eat the dips straight out of the jars, we are no longer fancy guests enough to have things decanted – I bet next time we go we’ll be swigging wine out the bottle and water straight from the dispenser on the fridge 😉 ), kids went off to play, with only occassional returns to us from Davies. Don’t think I blogged about it but he burnt his arm earlier in the week, leaning over the rice cooker to get a glass out of the cupboard. The steam burnt a fairly big (about 50pence piece size) burn on his lower arm. He’s been pretty uncomplaining about it and Ady does have a really good burns kit with some excellent cream which we used on it straightaway which helped, but on Saturday it had finally blistered and the top layer of skin had come off leaving it quite raw, red and sore. We bandaged it but it was, understandably, giving him some grief 🙁
Lovely dinner from Marcus and then the children went off again, returning around midnight whereupon Ady and Marcus did putting them to bed, Mich and I visited them once installed to bestow goodnight kisses and further chatting and drinking wine commenced. We were in bed by 3, not much before 3 it has to be said, but before 3 just the same ;).
Sunday started later. Marcus did a splendid cooked breakfast / brunch / feast for the slovenly. And we had chocolate Valentines hearts and Hershey’s chocolate kisses. All about the romance 😉
Further topping up of tea reserves and chatted later we headed off to the Fishes. We arrived to find The Babs and many children – I suspect she was trying to be like Maria and teach them doh a dear, I know I would if I found myself in charge of that many small people 😆
Katy arrived back, as did Bob, Jan and children, Chris and children, Gina and children, Big Alice and Jon and then various other people I didn’t know. Finally managed to hand over Kirsty and Helen’s birthday gifts to Chris and Babs to carry on delivering – another reason I was really sorry not to have made it on Saturday as I’d have liked to hand them over to the actual people, infront of many of the people who they are from but at least we managed to give them the second installment of their joint 70th gifts before they are 72!
Bob gave us a Bob Fact (quite the most gleefully received Bob Fact I’ve ever witnessed infact – as he launched into it, Jan, Babs, Michelle and I were exchanged delighted grins with each other 🙂 ), there was a chocolate fountain 
which predictably once fruit and brownies had been dipped was then used for ‘extreme chocolate fountain dipping’ and at SB’s suggestion Megan tried a jacket potato. Don’t think it was delicious 😆
(and the red eye and chocolate looking a bit like blood dripping gives her a rather vampire-y look).
All too aware of the drive back home again we left just after 430pm – quite sad at the thought that we don’t have another group meet up arranged for ages so am trying to think of something to organise for March or April.
Another smooth journey home, arriving just before 7pm. Kids had some tea, we had baths, I was presented with a Valentine card from Davies (and yes that should be ‘me’ rather than ‘my’)
a couple of bath bombs made by Scarlett
(dreadful photo, might retake it and edit)
which had been made over the course of last week in secret 🙂
Oh and a bottle of fizz from Ady, which he kept topping up for me while I had my bath and then cooked me a lovely dinner 🙂
(see I do use the glass Helen :))
And bed.
Thanks for a lovely weekend to all hosts and other guests. Really sorry to have missed those on Saturday we didn’t see.
Thanks very much for coming – it was great to see you all.
http://compphys.bio.uci.edu/bennett/pubs/155.pdf – figure 3 (on page 7). The Mount Kenya Side-Striped Chameleon is also known as Chamaeleo schubotzi.
Comment by Bob — 16 February 2010 @ 12:35 pm
Oh, and if D or S ever get under-excited about the power of the Archimedean screw tell them that’s what gets the melted chocolate up from the bowl to the top of the chocolate fountain. 🙂
Comment by Bob — 16 February 2010 @ 12:37 pm