All came flooding back…

Ady, who is wonderful – do I ever mention that? – got us all up and provided tea and breakfast etc. this morning stupidly early so we could be out of the house before 9am. I’d checked aaroutefinder and got a journey time of 3 hours, the sat nav said 2.5 and actually we did it in well under that, but it was good to be prompt rather than late :).

We were off to Eve and Rei’s birthday bash held at a gym with free reign on all the fab equipment and then back to their Wednesday friend’s rather wondeful home for further partying. Davies was in tears twice in the car over Very Small And Insignificant Things which had me questionning whether he was up to it or not (very long day yesterday which can often result in him being delicate at best, a bloody pain in the arse at worse) but aside from a small incident with a balloon between him and Scarlett which I carried out my threat to burst in the end to draw a line under it he managed to pull himself together well thankfully.

The gym was fab, all the stuff I remember from school gym lessons; springboards, trampolines, the horse, crash mats, beams and loads of stuff like rings and parallel bars and pits which I’m not even sure I’d seen before in real life :). The children had an absolute ball and Ady and I had a pretty good time too – another ‘should have worn a sports bra’ moment on the trampoline though, and even perhaps should have worn a top that wasn’t so loose it flew up when I jumped 😳 😆 I think only Merry saw!

Always lovely to see Lovely Em of course and great to see Kirsty and James, Michelle and Marcus, Merry and all the various children too :). We barely saw the children as they all scattered into the various corners of the gorgeous house leaving us free to sit on the kitchen floor (as you do) and plan camping trips:). Oh and eat coconut ice 😆

We left around 530pm I guess and although we drove through dreadful weather we made good time getting home. I went to check on all the chicks and bantams and discovered that our lovely broody hen who we stuck 3 of Tom’s eggs underneath has hatched 2 of them and had teeny chicks all nestled underneath her :). We’ll give the third egg another day or so and then remove it if it’s not hatched – I couldn’t tell if it was pipping or not yet. They both seem fine and fit but we’ve not touched them as this is our totally hands off, leave nature to it hatching experience. She appears to be a great mum though and had them all tucked under her wings. The other hen was equally clucky over them and the cockerel seems protective rather than about to eat them too so fingers crossed we can just leave them to it. Made the other chicks, who are now full time outside but in a contained area within the chicken area, look enormous seeing day old chicks again :). So that takes our current poultry count to 12 which will quickly be pushing us to attend to proper integration for all those staying and a bigger house to keep them in at night together too – will consider this further…

Fiesty cockerel:

fatherhood has not mellowed him any!

chicks -I think they are about 5 weeks old now:

this is one of our bantams chicks – as in the chick of our our cock and hens rather than Tom’s

here is Spatchcock the lame chick -he is still much smaller than the others and has more fluff than feathers still but is growing, so he must be eating and drinking and not getting picked on by the others. He wouldn’t have any chances elsewhere so we’ll have to keep him but he’d doing just fine. I’m saying ‘he’ all the while desperately hoping Spatchcock is a hen 🙂 but I learnt my lesson with last years batch to assume they are all roos until proved otherwise by egg production :lol:.

here they are in situ:
Tom’s chicks

And finally the latest additions:

She is looking less than gorgeous as she was the cockerels most favoured hen so lost all her head feathers where he used to hold on. When she went broody he changed his affections to the other hen but her feathers haven’t all grown back yet.

We finished our latest Famous Five and as the children spent most of the car journey listening to yet another one, unabridged, on audiobook in the car I am hopeful I can push Famous Five readalouds to Jan Francis who seems to be ‘the voice’ of all the ones I’ve seen and move onto more interesting things at bedtime now. I didn’t really anticipate just how much they’d fall for them but they have been a big hit here.

Everyone took ages to go to sleep / bed so I expect a lazy morning tomorrow for me and the children. Ady is working, but hoping to finish at not late an hour while I am planning to sit home and curse about bank holidays while maybe doing a spot more ebay listing.