Bye Then

After a truly hungover Friday during which I failed to do much towards leaving the house next week let alone preparing for the party I was feeling better on Saturday but hugely unprepared for the party. I think it’s the first party ever when we’ve not had someone staying with us the night before so it felt quite surreal just being us in a pretty empty house. The kids and I finished decorating the cake with some details and then we headed to the hall.

There were already people there, a young band dressed all in black with greasy hair and expensive electric guitars doing a photoshoot with lots of dry ice on the stage. We were pretty early but I poked my head in to ask if there was a kettle and cups as the hall hire lady hadn’t been sure when I’d asked on Thursday and it’s a couple of years since we last hired it. The photographer was very friendly so I decided to ask if we could come in and start putting our posters up and he agreed, which meant we had a crossover of the band finishing the last few shots on the stage including some strange poses where the drummer was bound and gagged with black tape while the rest of the band mimed whacking him with their guitars and more dry ice was blown around while we blue tacked inspirational quotes up around the room.

I’d been wondering how to decorate the hall this time – in the past we’ve either had a party theme; Halloween, Wallace and Gromit, Princesses, Doctor Who or a celebration of Scarlett – this time I went for quotes that I find inspiring with regard to getting out there and really living life, chasing your dreams or to quote someone who I missed lots yesterday ‘getting off your backside and living your life’. 😉 So I spent time at work the last couple of shifts looking at quotes online and wrote down all the ones that meant something to me. Some just made me laugh for various reasons (I had one by Dale Carnegie who wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People and was the creator of a course Ady attended a few years ago for work which used to make me laugh every time he came home and shared gems from the workshops with me) but most were ones that I genuinely felt talked to me or were relevant to us. The photographer chatted for a few minutes at the end to find out what we had the hall for and loved the idea of our year – I loved the idea we might have been lurking at the photoshoot for a band who may one day be famous :). My final nod towards organising a party was to create a cd with songs including wandering or wondering.

At midday, the official start time of the party we were sat in an empty hall, just the four of us and the cake. Babs rang to say she was almost with us and I had a complete wobble about inviting people to a party with no food or drink and send Ady and Davies out to Asda to buy some. Foolishly as it turned out, as by the time they had returned several people had arrived and the table was rapidly filling up. I’m not at all sure where the next four hours went really – there was dancing, chatting, hugging, laughing, blasts from the past in the shape of a couple of guests and worlds colliding as local friends met not-so-local friends and some people were able to put faces to names.

Just as I went to nip off to the loo we got called up to go on the stage so I ran off anyway and came back to be presented with some fantastic gifts – a kindle with a gorgeous handmade cover and the most fabulous table cloth ever made of self timer photos of our friends 🙂 🙂 🙂 Truly overwhelmed at the generosity and thoughtfulness of them and also now appreciative of the stress and angst caused by some of my comments in various places in the weeks leading up to the party ;). I got Ady to do the speech as I was far too likely to get emotional and silly so I threw that into making a spectacle of myself by line dancing instead 😉 😆

I realised suddenly it was getting dark and we were supposed to have already been out of the hall so a concerted effort from everyone meant we had it cleared, hoovered and loaded into cars in record time, goodbyes to those heading off for home said and the remainder of us decamped to our house. A squeeze for 18 adults and 23 children 😯 (even more 😯 I just did a quick count up of how many extra people were at the party and that was another 18 adults and 20 children – 79 people in total, yep, we definitely needed that hall – and that’s a lot of goodbye hugs in the last week given the 13 people at my work meal and the 12 people at Reading Group. I’m starting to feel my wussiness at being in bed before midnight last night was almost justified!)

A lovely evening with people drifting off as the night wore on until we hit 1130pm and I just couldn’t stay awake any more. I had a cracking headache and my bed was calling with the siren song of ‘just three more sleeps’ so I sloped off and collected Davies and Scarlett from the kids hang out to come to bed with me and sent the other kids downstairs so I had a chance of actually getting to sleep. The kids and I cuddled up and chatted for a while and when I checked the clock it was 1230am so I turned out the light.

Today I woke about 830am and could hear Ady chatting in the kitchen. When I emerged from the bedroom though there was no one to be found so Scarlett and I sat on the stairs for a while talking about how excited we were :). Ady had gone out to sweep the chickens area but after a chat about the plans for the next few days I persuaded him back in the house and we found people had started to get up so we decamped to the lounge.

A nice easy morning spent chatting with Chris & Helen, Kirsty & James, Jax and Jo while the kids were off playing in various combinations. We finally cut the Willow cake which had been forgotten at the party thanks to the line dancing and then the rush to clear the hall. A plan had been put forward to head to the beach so eventually we did all manage it, saying bye to Jax who was heading for home.

The kids pretty much all got wet, particularly Scarlett and Elinor who both got swept over by a large wave and ended up drenched head to toe! 😆 Scarlett predictably got up and said ‘that was BRILLIANT!’ but chattering teeth and soaked clothing meant the end of the game so we headed back to the cars, stripped children off and brought them back home again. Davies had a shower, Scarlett and Alex had a (very, very long) bath, Kirsty made hot chocolate for children and we had leftovers lunch and more cake.

Further chatting before finally our last guests left us – about five minutes after Kirsty & James said goodbye Helen rang to ask if Chris’s coat was still hanging up – yes. Five minutes after that Kirsty texted to ask if they’d left a bag in the kitchen – also yes! Chris (who never normally forgets anything 😉 ) came back and kindly took The Barts bag to pass on too.

Davies and Scarlett had tea, watched Flushed Away (sky has now been turned off so we just have freeview channels and they are wanting to watch everything stored on the HD DVD player before we go) and then went to bed, theoretically for an early night but neither of them managed it. I did set the kindle up for Tarly on text to talk mode so she had what sounded like Stephen Hawkins reading her a bedtime story. Davies appeared at least twice and shared some of his ‘I’m worried about X and excited about Y’ thoughts with us which we talked through.

Ady and I had a very late curry dinner and made a job list for the next two days to work through. I’ve blogged in all places, mourned the fact I stupidly didn’t take any pictures yesterday including of the finished decorated cake and now I’m off for the penultimate sleep in my bed.