Friday morning seems a long time ago. I have a feeling there might have been not very much going on in preparation for a long crazy weekend ahead. If there were any moments of sheer brilliance, demonstrations of genius or the like then sadly they have passed me by now and will remain undocmented.
Dad came over just before 1pm and we had a coffee and a chat together before I headed off to collect Caz and go over to Caroline’s for the ‘Meet the LA!’ event detailed below. He stayed with Davies and Scarlett until Ady got home a couple of hours later and apparently they had some interesting conversations about recreational drugs, police forces in the UK and US and other such things. Davies tells me it was ‘very interesting’ 😆
I collected Caz and the boys, we dropped the boys off with Bid and then over to Caroline’s. I found the afternoon to be very interesting, enjoyable in many ways, I felt proud to be part of such a diverse but open to debate and amicable disagreement community, scared of the depth of ideas so different to my own, in awe and respect of some of the other people there and reassured that certainly for now the LA are prepared to engage with us in such a forum.
I could have happily sat chatting for far longer – we stayed for about an hour after Ellie Evans left just chatting and going over some of what had been said – but Caz had to get back and I needed to get home too really, so I dropped her off at her parents and arrived home in a huge downpour of rain which was most unpleasant to be driving in as it got dark.
Ady was home and had fed the kids and started to prepare the house ready for weekend guests. I had a bath, chatted to Ady and the children about the whole meeting and then quickly committed some of it down before it all escaped me too much.
Just as I finished typing Kirsty, James, Marcus and Alex arrived and aside from the odd bit of wikipedia-ing to clarify popfacts that was me offline for the next 48 hours.
A and M went straight upstairs to Davies’ room where D&S were already allegedly ‘going to sleep’ so they joined in with that charade (eventually ceased at 2am after we’d all gone to bed too and I got fed up with the noise still coming from their room when I was trying to go to sleep as I had to be up for work in the morning.
I was equally put out when they were noisily awake again at 7am on Saturday 😆
I went off to work for the morning and left everyone else to it. Ady went to collect a washing machine (my Dad who provided our last one from a house he owns had come across another one from a similar source so we now have that and will try and replace the broken bits in the last one at some point so he can have that one back but at least we now have a working one and no pressing urgency to get it fixed).
Saturday afternoon and evening seemed to pass fairly quickly in plenty of tea drinking, pizza cooking, kids playing, adults chatting, wine o’clock and 80s pop. And lots of jokes where the punchline was ‘Lebanon’ 😆 I dimly recall watching Sesame Street too for quite a while…
Sunday started earlier than ideal when Scarlett crawled into bed with me having been up a while and just snuggled back down and went to sleep in my arms. A lovely start to Mothers Day :).
I was presented with a gorgeous painted canvas from each child which are already hanging on the lounge wall in pride of place – will photograph them tomorrow. And a pair of bright cherry red DMs which Ady had found in a charity shop, all but brand new 🙂 I heart them 🙂
He also got a grey flowered pair at the same time but they are a size too small, which he did know but as they were also new and at a bargain price he bought them anyway. My mother has now appropriated them as they are her size. I’ve made her promise to give them back as and when Scarlett grows into them though.
K, J, A and M left us and went to look at the ocean before they headed for home I believe. We went over to my parents via the seafront too as the main road was unbelievably congested. We had a nice lunch over there with my Granny and Frazer too. We then scattered about a bit with the kids and I spending some time playing on the piano – I taught Davies how to play Twinkle, twinkle and Row, row, row your boat which he picked up impressively quickly. Dad and Ady watched the football with Granny in the lounge too and my Mum sort of floated about. My Granny ended up leaving in a bit of a huff which I had no sympathy for at all but upset my Mum rather.
After some debate and persuasion from Davies and Scarlett we arranged to meet my parents at the local Harvester in an hour and nipped home to put the chickens away and get changed before going there.
We had a nice meal although D&S were pretty wiped out and then came back here for coffee. They did do their usual trick of staying far longer than we really wanted them to, especially after D&S went to bed and I finally kicked them out at 11pm when countless hints, obvious yawns and ‘well, busy day tomorrow!’ type comments had all bounced straight off them. I suspect I have not really pulled off fantastic daughter or granddaughter today but I maintained my personal standard for mothering so I’m pretty content with that.