First things first, could everyone please wave and say Hello to The Babs! 😆 She will be reading this one post, even if she doesn’t then read my blog again until after NicCamps ;).
Friday was a work-all-day day for me and seems far too long ago now to recall much about tbh. I know I got caught up in conversation with at least two colleagues about whether I’d ever want to do the job full time (I wouldn’t) and how it differs from previous jobs I’ve had over the years. Julie was here in the morning followed by Frazer in the afternoon, so I had a half hour catch up chat with Frazer before he left. They all seemed to have had a nice day but the highlight for me was finding a picture of a cat, beautifully coloured in, with ‘Frazer, 31’ written neatly at the bottom corner :lol:.
Ady arrived home just as I’d served Davies his tea and was quickly washing up some cups and plates while Scarlett buttered some toast and her eggs cooked. I’d plunged a cup which must have had a hairline crack in it into hot water and it had come clean in half and sliced my finger open which was bleeding copiously into the washing up water while Scarlett tried to tear off some kitchen roll for me so I could go to the bathroom and get a plaster without dripping blood all the way there. So he took over the serving of tea, disposed of broken china, double plastered my finger (which turned out to be nothing serious, just very bleedy ) and I made tea and coffee. And then my Mum turned up, unexpectedly. She was on pretty good form and ended up staying for tea and then a glass of wine as time ticked into alcohol territory, which meant we ended up with a very late tea and none of the pre-packing for the weekend I’d planned to get done achieved.
Saturday morning was all rather brisk and efficient and we were off by 9am (should have been 8 but realistically that was never going to happen ;)) and we did rather a lot of this which was a good ten hours out of the weekend:
I’d packed the children a bag each with water, rice cakes, sweets, coloured pencils, a drawing pad and gathered 8 dvds from work in a selection of genres including short episodes of things like Shaun the Sheep and Charlie and ‘Lulah’ (never Lola in our house :)) and some films – Magic Roundabout, The Witches, the Little Bear movie and so on. We also listened to lots of Queen, Mika, Kaiser Chiefs and more.
The journey was fine, just over 4 hours with one stop for weeing in the bushes when it got too close to comfort to continue to the next services. We pulled up at The Babs’ and were met with Babs and a map and sent straight back away again. Only five minutes down the road to a local quarry gardens place where we quickly indentified the row of cars all with EO stickers in the back windscreens but were confused by the two footpaths, one bridal path, entrance to the hall and path to the quarry to choose from. We wandered round the first and most likely looking one to no avail, so I texted Chris and eventually after wandering up another path Ady rang Chris and he got the children to yell so we could track them down :lol:. Davies and Scarlett fell straight into running round and being loud with the other children already on hand (Deep End folk – essential guests for any party ;), Karen and Dom’s 3 oldest, All the Raines, Marcus and Alex and a couple of lucky dip local folk’s offspring too – 15 in all). There was a picnic and a kinder egg dinosaur hunt which they all found and sat on rugs to eat and then adults were required to prise open the plastic eggs and construct the toys (Bob, I youtubed and I do remember it now :lol:). Then Davies needed the loo which required a walk so Ady headed off, ending up with a trail of 3 extra children behind him 😆
We then headed back to Bab’s where everything was very under control and a very pleasant afternoon and evening and early hours of the morning was had in the company of The Babs & Chris, Katy & Bob, Kirsty & James, Karen & Dom and a local couple with the default names of Kate and Chris ;). There was copious amounts of pizza, dalek bread and some very impressive themed baking including dinosaur nests with dinosaur eggs, rock buns and a fab volcano cake. Katy did amazing work as chief children’s entertainer, I got to cuddle Anna and in the evening had a really nice few hours with Katy and Babs (and Kirsty before they left) staggering to bed only when it became apparent that Babs really wasn’t going to take her trousers off after all :lol:.
This morning was a slow start for us four, even Ady and Scarlett, the earliest risers of the four of us didn’t wake until nearly 930am and Davies and I were even slower. We had a fab breakfast of eggy fried leftover sandwiches (Katy just went on and on demonstrating ever more admirable skills :)), lots of tea and finally when everyone else went off to church we headed for home.
It was an uneventful but boring and lengthy (four hours plus on motorways is just not very inspiring really) journey home but we arrived with plenty of time to get a roast dinner on early enough to eat it with Davies and Scarlett and while Davies and I did some Zoo Tycooning, Ady and Scarlett spent a couple of hours out in the garden preparing ready for our newest additions which arrive tomorrow….. yes, thanks to Ady’s workmate Tom, who attended a poultry auction yesterday having been told by Ady that we were after bantams and if he saw any unusual or pretty ones at good prices to get them, we take delivery of four (definitely all girl :)) little brown bantams tomorrow. They are rare breed buff bearded sablepoot bantams. I can’t find them online so will take pictures to post up of our own ones when they arrive but they are little, feathered footed and pretty much excactly the same age as Wobble, Freddie and Punzel so should be already at, or about to reach point of lay. So hurrah for eggs sometime very soon :). As there are four we’ll all name one each. Ady is sticking with ‘Feathers’ on the basis that if youve got a good name you stick with it, Davies is currently insisting on ‘Crazy Frog’ 🙄 :lol:, Scarlett hasn’t decided yet but it will probably be either Barbie related or some form of bantam, hen, or chicken with a Y on the end and I’m toying with the idea of ‘Omelette’ but want to meet her first before I decide.
We have a pretty low key week coming up which I think will be a Good Thing, particularly as its half term anyway so everywhere will be heaving, but are looking forward to MM tomorrow and the prospect of no evening activities for a whole week :).
gosh yes, even as a HEor I remember feeling the relief from the evening activities at halfterm!
Love Ben’s cake, that is fabulous. Sounds like it was a great weekend 🙂
Comment by Sarah — 22 October 2007 @ 5:02 am
I’m glad that:
a) there’s slightly less evidence that I’m mad (me umscrubbly)
b) I’m married to someone who turns left over sandwiches into fab fried breakfasts
I hope your new house guests turn out to be female and well-behaved.
Comment by Bob — 22 October 2007 @ 11:55 am
Sounds like a busy weekend. I take it you mean bridle path rather than bridal path. I quite like the latter, though. Sounds like somewhere you might lead a girl astray before she was in the shackles of wedlock! 😉
Good luck with the new feathered friends.
Comment by Allie — 22 October 2007 @ 5:06 pm
Andrew says can he please have the recipe for the volcano cake 😆
have crazy frog and chickeny arrived yet? can’t wait to see pics!
Comment by Liza — 22 October 2007 @ 5:58 pm
Thanks so much for coming all that way, and for the fab presents. As you can see, Ben clearly had a fabulous time 😉
See you in two weeks…
Barbara x
Comment by Barbara — 22 October 2007 @ 7:37 pm
I forgot to say: thanks very much for fixing L’s croc. She was charging around Morrisons at lunchtime (I was looking after them while Katy had a shopping frenzy) and it was only her hair that was streaming behind her and not the strap of her croc. You obviously have stronger thumbs than mere mortals.
Comment by Bob — 23 October 2007 @ 12:49 pm