Friday and fabulous friends :)

It doesn’t get much better than that really does it? 🙂

I had intended to get up at a respectable time this morning but then Tarly woke just after 7am and was all shrieky and annoying long before I had woken up properly, drunk any caffiene or could infact see properly (I am as good as blind without my contact lenses) and as the cause of her volume was that she wanted me to help her find something it was testing all round.

I am so not a morning person anyway and I really do require gentle lulling to a state of consciousness. Birds singing sweetly (in a muted way), the smell of freshly baked bread drifting up the stairs from the kitchen, the distant sizzle of bacon cooking, perhaps the cheery whistle and clinking of bottles announcing the milkman going about his rounds, that sort of thing. Scarlett doing her very best haridan impression (learnt at her mother’s knee of course ;)) really isn’t going to cut it. I debated getting up then and staying in that frame of mind or going back to bed and trying again in an hour or so.

The going back to bed won! She went to watch telly and Davies, who had also been roused from his slumber by her came and had a cuddle with me in bed before drifting downstairs as I went back to sleep.

I assembled the various things we were taking to Ali’s – white bread for my picky son, pesto as Ali thought she might be deluding herself that she actually had some, pine nuts because I love them and can’t be sure other people have a proper supply, some conchilgli as we have a bit of a backlog of pasta here and some cows milk because I just can’t bear the thought of all those poor soya beans being crushed to death to extract their milk (and therefore depirving baby soya beans of extended breastfeeding) to put in my tea ;).

Then we headed off to Ali’s. We had a really lovely day there. The kittens were just gorgeous and lovely (and I had a really long sit on me from little Fidget), Scarlett had some good time with Freya DSing and kitten worshipping and then Davies had some time with Freya DSing, pixelchick-ing (an exercise for him in feigning an interest in something ;)) and xboxing – all very relaxed and harmonious 🙂 Scarlett got to do plenty of kitten loving and Davies and I made up poems about the kittens (Fidget, Fidget with the extra digits. Rawshack the kitty is very, very pretty!).

We ate – aswell as the food I’d brought (;)) there was very nice chocolate :).

But best of all there was delayed birthday celebrating for me :). Ali (who is too nice for her own good, but certainly nice enough for the good of others, specifically ME today!) had done me a series of challenges on silver cards just like the ones Ant and Dec read out nominations for winners of things off of.

First I had to translate some French. This was timely as I’d been boasting I could do it earlier and made an attempt at something Ali had emailed to her. Reading ‘Happy Birthday. You are a good friend and your present is…. a bottle of wine’ was all within my vocab. Odd how ‘birthday’ ‘friend’ ‘present’ and ‘wine’ were all words I instantly recognised ;).

Next I had to identify the song containing various lyrics such as ‘pink carnation’, ‘book of love’ and a couple more. The prize was to listen to and sing along with said song. So Ali, Davies, Scarlett, Freya and I all got up and sang and danced for the full 8 minutes and 32 seconds of joy that is American Pie. It was ace. Totally what one should be doing on a Friday lunchtime -honestly these folk off and work and school have no idea what they’re mising ;).

Finally the children acted out a film for me to guess (Wallace and Gromit) and I was presented with a voucher to go and watch a film of my choice with Ali, Freya, Davies and Scarlett AT THE CINEMA, in the next six months :).

It was so ace, I felt very special and birthday-ish, thanks lovely mate 🙂 xxx

We came home and on the way had a bit of a ‘listen to and discuss’ about Mr Blue Sky by ELO and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer by The Beatles.

Ady was home not long after us, the kids had tea and then Scarlett and I went off to Rainbows. They did brass rubbings tonight which was quite good. Scarlett managed to fall over and bang the back of her head quite spectacularly which needed a good few minutes sitting on my lap sobbing into my shoulder to rectify. Honestly, every time we get close to her agreeing for me to not sit in for the session something like that happens which reminds both of us that we’d rather it was me there to cuddle her than anyone else. I wonder if I’ll feel the need to go to nightclubs with her incase she gets drunk and maudlin after drinking too many southern comforts and feels the need to sob in the loo towards the end of the evening like I used to? Was that really me?

I was accosted by a woman there with her newly started Rainbow who claimed to know me from somewhere and did indeed know I had an older boy but I honestly can’t recall ever seeing her before ever. She reminded me a lot of Gail who came to the last Kessingland (and Legoland actually) and was Very Intense.

On the way home Tarly and I chatted about one of the girls who always talks over everyone else at ‘show and tell’. Scarlett was saying this was really rude and inconsiderate of others and I said she should practise a firm, assertive voice and feel free to say ‘Excuse me, I am talking now’ if it bothered her. We then talked about a couple of girls who are Best Friends there and how they do the same, talking over others and being all giggly. Scarlett said ‘they go to school together and I bet they sit next to each other all the time in the classroom’. I agreed and said that lots of children get to know each other in school and then take those friendships outside of school too. I was then overcome with guilt at not providing this social opportunity for my darling daughter and said ‘if you ever wanted to go to school so you could be part of the gang and get to do all that you know you could baby don’t you?’ to which she laughed and said ‘that’s just ANOTHER reason not to go to school!’ 😆 Go Tarly!

For bedtime stories we read Uneversaurus and No Dinner!: The Story of the Old Woman and the Pumpkin.

Dinner today was pizza for Davies, Ady and I. Scarlett had a serving of pesto pasta with pine nuts at Ali’s and decided she does like pine nuts after all so requested the same again for dinner and ate the lot.