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I went to bed feeling very blessed with lovely friends, not to mention wishing I’d not signed up to quite so many forums and mailing lists that had all bombarded my inbox with automated birthday greetings moments past midnight :). I was a bit disgruntled about lack of snow mind you.

I woke up about 3am and got a drink and noticed it still hadn’t snowed.

Then Scarlett woke me just before 9am to say ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’ and ‘LOOK AT ALL THE SNOW!’ 🙂

Once downstairs I was presented with cards, gifts including some lovely snuggly (rubber leopard print) pjs and five boxes of luxury chocolate liqueurs (it’s the perk of an after-Christmas birthday, excellent sale pickings :)). I got a bottle of Baileys from my brother and £40 from my parents to spend at the Lush shop (had been very firm about not wanting anything other than Lush stuff and said that part of the fun is choosing my own so any cash for that purpose gratefully recieved 🙂 That should buy me a years supply of nice bath bubbles :)). Davies had also modified a cardboard box into a sort of ‘workstation’ for me including tissue holder and contact lens space 🙂 Scarlett had made me a potion. I am so beloved ;).

Ady brought me three cups of tea and several pancakes and we sat and watched the snow falling prettily down. I had loads more texts and emails and messages from friends and colleagues and phonecalls from both parents – Mum at 10am and Dad bang on 10.10am (the time I was born) which was lovely :).

We watched a kids tv show where the children are in charge of a holiday with their parents and get to decide on activities and ban their parents from doing stuff – they banned their mum from eating chilli sauce and shopping 😆 and made their parents do stuff like white water rafting. We all really liked the look of the crazy pursuits (along with the rafting they did being pulled behind a boat in big rubber rings, jumping off cliffs into water, fishing and powergliding behind a boat). The kids said if they were in charge they’d pick a similar holiday for us and ban me from my laptop (which they did concede I don’t have on holiday anyway) and from drinking tea 😯 Scarlett then decided the tea was harsh and I could have tea after all, but be banned from drinking wine!!! Not sure which I’d miss most – actually I am, I could give up wine but tea would be a real struggle. Maybe if I could start smoking or something I’d be okay…

Davies and Scarlett headed outside to play in the snow and an indoor / outdoor snowball fight ensued. I was inside and na-na-nahing at them through an open window but wasn’t quite quick enough to close it every time so snow came in. Which did at least arm me to throw some back. After Davies had a real bulls eye shot in with snow all over the lounge I gathered it up and went upstairs and showered them from above from the bathroom window 😆 They then caught me by ringing on the doorbell and bombarding me when I opened the front door so I went outside to get revenge :).

Ady came out too and we had a walk up one side of the road and down the other including making snow angels, skidding on the road and chatting to a couple of neighbours. We came back in for hot chocolate and a warm up and then decided to go out. We had planned to go to Chichester or Brighton for the day prior to the snow to have lunch out, spend my Lush money and get a few more bits so decided to drive and see how the roads were and made a decision.

The roads turned out to be pretty dire and so we decided to go into town instead. We thought even if we got to Chichester the Lush shop might be closed anyway (plenty of shops were) and we might then have problems getting home again. At least Worthing is only 3 or 4 miles from home and is walkable home if the roads got too bad.

It was really nice seeing so few cars on the road and so many people out and about walking, pulling sledges, out with all the family. It was like Christmas card scenes and how I remember bits of childhood. Like everyone had decided that just for today nothing was more important than being with their family and having fun in the snow. Loved that my birthday was a bit special for lots of other people too :).

We parked in town and decided to visit my Mum in her new shop (she’s managing a charity shop for a local homeless project charity) as she’d said on the phone she was working for a few hours today. The shop is quite small and very lacking in stock so far (it opened a few days before Christmas so stock is still trickling in and in the process of being sorted and priced etc.) but is well located and nicely fitted out. I think she’ll be really happy there and they have no policy on retiring people at 65 so if she wants to carry on working (which she will – she is 63 this year and has no intention of stopping in 2 years) then she can.

We had a wander round town – Poundland for gloves for the kids (theirs had been soaked in the snow earlier so were drying on the radiator at home. Two pairs for a quid means I was happy to buy them another pair each), a silicone butterfly shaped mould for Scarlett who is into making jelly at the moment, some freezer bags for all the batch cooking I’m doing and a new tin opener as we chucked out ours last night in temper when it messed up opening all four tins of tomatoes. Honestly if your sole purpose of existance is to open tins then you really need to be able to manage that! I got some perfume (Sun, Moon and Stars, I’ve worn it for years but my bottle ran out about 3 years ago and I’ve never been able to justify just buying a bottle of perfume for myself since) and that was it. I actually got a huge buzz out of walking round the shops and realising there was nothing at all I wanted or needed :). Still looking forward to going to Lush though ;).

Back home again for a very late lunch of Christmas food leftovers – fancy meats and cheeses etc followed by my birthday cake (Thorntons toffee cake – yum). Ady put 16 candles on it and I was rather shocked to agree that yes, that had been 20 years ago!

The children had a bath to warm up. They complained it was too hot after they’d got in it so Ady went and gathered an armful of snow and dumped it in – cue great hilarity 😆

A very late tea for Davies and Scarlett followed by a very late bedtime as they were still sat infront of the fire playing while Ady cooked a curry and I had a bath. Lovely dinner for us and lots of lazing around in my new pjs pretending to be a grown up :).