Come and join the celebration…

Blimey that was a good week 🙂

Monday – Had a really good journey all the way down to Devon and arrived a full hour early. Ady had been worried that the person driving the car behind us might be pissed off with his erratic driving as we swerved left and right following our route finder directions up a steep hill, but we needn’t have worried as it was actually Sarah!

We went in and helped allocate rooms and then brought up our stuff while others arrived. The YH is lovely, very pretty with nice rooms and a very nice kitchen. The one downside is the flimsy floors which create a herd of elephants style effect when even the lightest of children walk down the corridors with fairy footsteps!

Monday evening is a bit of a haze now, I know we had jacket potatoes cos I helped make the tuna and sweetcorn (OK, I opened a couple of tins) and that I spent most of the evening sitting next to Layla drinking though. 🙂 We also had the story of St Nicholas from Kath and the children all left a shoe out to be filled with chocolate buttons.

We listened to the speaking clock announce 1.51 am on Tuesday morning which was the time Scarlett had been born three years previously and then I think I went to bed!

Tuesday – Scarlett’s birthday

Tarly sat like a princess in the dining room while people showered her with gifts for about an hour first thing – which was lovely 🙂 Thank you all!

Tarly and I then went down into the town to get the supplies for stew for the next day which was lovely. While we were gone Davies and Ady went off for a walk which they really enjoyed too. It’s not often we split up with the children and when we do it tends to be the other way round so it was lovely for me and Tarly to do some stuff just the two of us on her birthday. With that in mind we bought some mince meat, flour and butter too.

When we got back to the hostel we spent a very happy hour or so in the kitchen baking lots of mince pies. Without the aid of a set of scales or a safety net we artfully streaked our cheeks with flour smudges and used old fashioned ideas like level spoonsfuls and so on. They actually came out rather well, described by Layla as ‘looking like they’ve been baked by a buxom wench!’ and they were all eaten over the week so that was flattering. We also managed to smash that myth that Ady does EVERYTHING.

Layla brought ‘wine for the chef at about 3.30pm’ so I started early and managed to do the whole cake candle lighting for Scarlett having eaten fish and chips for tea as none of my lot wanted macaroni cheese. Scarlett’s face with all those people singing Happy Birthday to her was a picture (just like Davies’ when he had a whole restaurant singing to him at Centerparcs earlier this year, public birthdays are SO cool!) and even if not all of the vibrantly pink cake got eaten all of the sparkly pink balls and other decorations did! We also did Jax and Alison’s birthday cake a day early and Layla’s baking was much admired on that one.

The children went off to bed and a full evening of fun and frolicks commenced. We sang along to The Pogues (including a bit of Kirsty worship thanks to a picture being supplied by the official supplier of photographs of dead celebrities, which we sang Thankyou for the days to until we all welled up 🙁 ), Shakin Stevens and various versions of Band Aid. We discussed initial plans for a Kylie Camp at some future point (and don’t think I didn’t make copious notes of all of the committments made to that one 😉 ), we watched some nonsense with blokes in leather in horses with much FFing and rewinding to get to a two one word sentences which apparantly are about the only reason you’d choose to watch the film. Then with slightly depleted numbers (I can’t imagine why anyone didn’t want to stay up and join in though 😉 ) we sang all the songs from ‘Grease’. Desperate for further singing we turned to a My First Christmas Activity dvd which had a fair amount of comedy value but very few ‘real’ carols apart from a thrash version of Twelve Days of Christmas.

I think we had a brief moment of courtesy for other, sleeping people at that point so we adjourned to the other end of the corridor to the games room where the only sleeping people were related to me and another of the carollers and we sang some beautiful Christmas carols complete with descant versions and angelic faces :-), then we played some Who Wants to be a Millionaire before learning the Oompa Lumpa dance.

It was a lovely day all round, I got to see in the actual moment of my baby’s birth with friends, I had quality time with my daughter during the day, she celebrated surrounded by friends and then I spent the evening celebrating my baby not being a baby or even a toddler any more and a fully fledged little girl by reclaiming some time to be a silly giggly grown up with slightly less responsibilities than a mother with tiny babies is allowed to enjoy! 😉

Wednesday – Alison and Jax’s birthday

Back to the kitchen again for me as I was doing communal cooking of beef / veggie stew for the masses. I enjoyed the company of various visitors as I chopped copious volumes of vegetables and meat and splashed wine and stock cubes all over them. Ady did a couple of runs into town for various bits and pieces and I had a quiet day drinking tea, stirring stew and gossiping with Layla and Kirsty. Alison helped with dumpling making, once again without the aid of kitchen scales! We did two sittings of stew, one for children and adults who usually eat early and one for those who wanted to pack children off to bed and eat with the grown ups. Steve and Chris had arrived so Wednesday was a bit more coupley, I was feeling very tired and perhaps ever so slightly hungover and as it was James and Kirsty’s last night Ady and I spent some quieter time playing pool with them instead of joining in the birthday Who Wants to be a Millionaire in the main lounge. Layla, who alleges she’s never played pool before was surprisingly good despite using the wrong end of the cue! 😉 An early night – 12.30 – for me! 😉

Thursday – The Nativity at Pennywell.

Predictably D & S were not up for joining in with the dressing up but we really enjoyed watching all our friends being nativity stars, particularly the innkeepers and Joseph! Layla and I were key participants in the audience participation and singing and the most touching moment was surely Sarah the shepherd :-D. I was very proud that despite not wanting to be Mary or even an angel Scarlett really did join in – she listened to the narrator announce the three wise men and called out (that’s by James Blunt) and then watched the assembled nativity scene being names ending with ‘and the baby Jesus’ before pointing and saying ‘it’s not a real baby, it’s just pretend!’ – still didn’t really trump Claudie on the night of St Nick though really! 😉

We thought Pennywell was excellent actually, well worth the money. The nativity was fab, the animals were lovely, the mulled wine was more than acceptable and the Santa gifts were very good quality – most impressed 🙂

Tilda came with us to the next stop which was House of Marbles and was excellent, both for entertaining D & S by drawing little faces on their fingers and for making me laugh at her Tilda-ness with some of her comments and stories. Lovely child 🙂 Marble place was really good actually, despite being a really quite mental place to take a group of marauding children and we managed to not break anything which I felt was quite an achievement! 😉 Liked watching the glass making in action and the children liked the animatronic Christmas tree.

We came back across Dartmoor, sadly stuck behind a learner driver, so at a very slow pace but enjoyed the views until Tarly announced she needed a bowl 🙁 She never actually was sick but we all sat the rest of the journey in anticipation!

Thursday night, turned into Friday morning in something of a haze of drinking. I know we sang some more, I know Sarah made some wild and surprising statements ;-), I know we played a game of asking the most outrageous questions of each other and everyone answered them honestly – wish I could remember what some of them were really! I think I had almost a whole hours sleep – I know Alison and Barbara didn’t even manage that. So Thursday never actually ended, it just blended into the packing and tidying up that was Friday morning really. I’d like to think my ineffectual sweeping and chucking away excess leftover food was helpful but I suspect bringing Ady along who was rarely without a tray of drinks in his hand, a plate of toast or a ready willingness to whip a messy room into shape in moments was by far the most helpful thing I did all week! 😉

The children had a great time, Scarlett – as predicted – didn’t manage to infiltrate the Lulah/Ammi friendship but she did spent time with Alex and Elinor. Davies hardly ever made it to the X box room so hardly saw Lije at all but played lots with Ben and Marcus. By the very last day he was visibly at the very end of his own personal comfort level and was displaying an impressive level of facial ticks which is always the marker of him having had enough. He was also involved in some face offs which as anyone who knows Davies will already be aware is far from his normal range of behaviour but he really enjoyed watching his favourite films in groups of friends and unfortunately for people behind doors he also quite liked running up and down the corridors ‘roaring’ with his little band of lads!

The journey home was fairly uneventful – Davies watched Willy Wonka three times, Scarlett slept (she was severly sleep deprived having given up her dummy last weekend), I might have snoozed a little, we stopped for McDonalds and when we arrived home around 4.30pm the children ran around the house so pleased to be home it was lovely to watch.

I have flickr’d, there is a video of the nativity which we’re hoping to get up on the net if our technical support team is able – it won’t be the rest of the video – I think that is only suitable viewing for the people starring in it – private viewing night for that tba if you are one of them ;-). It was a lovely week, I had a fantastic time, I’d like to apologise to anyone who was offended or awoken by my late night antics but frankly I’m not sorry so I won’t ;-), it was lovely to share Tarly’s birthday with friends and be there to share other’s birthdays with them and I want to know in advance who will be bringing karaoke to Melrose so I can brush up on my Britney! 🙂

Thanks Sarah! x