One word? When seven would do…

Friday I worked. Ady was home in the morning and my Mum in the afternoon. Not sure what everyone got up to really but the house was lovely and tidy when I got home :).

My day was a usual Friday at work, I did the banking in the morning, did Baby Rhyme time, manned the enquiry desk, worked on the counter and enjoyed the banter and chatter with colleagues and borrowers. Nightmare Colleague wasn’t in… Word is out about my Volunteer Shepherd course (which I had email confirmation of on Friday too :)) so there is plenty of laughter at my expense and debate about what sort of outfit I should wear – I’m planning something Bo Peep-esque! 😆

I got home just after 5pm, we got everything packed up ready and Ady arrived home at about 6 – rather later than planned thanks to an accident closing the tunnel near us and diverting him, along with everyone else driving home during Friday night rush hour along the coast road. I was irate at the inability of us to get out of the house as usual but we were on the road by 630pm and only hit about 20 minutes of road works so arrived at Marcus, Michelle and Chloe’s before 9pm.

At work they know most of my friends by a few words ‘catchphrase’ type description – there are our ‘not swinger’ friends, my ‘crafty’ friend (Tasha), my ‘crap vegan’ friend (needs no explanation) and other such ways of differentiating for the purposes of sharing ‘what are you up to this weekend then?’ type conversations or general anecdotes. M&M are my ‘friends with the glassware’ friends ;). And known for being probably the very best hosts.

Our arrival on Friday was no exception – cuddles, wine, roast beef with potatoes to suit all members of our family and a variety of style of yorkshire pudding awaited us ;). We ate, the children disappeared to play, we mostly sang songs into Ady’s mobile phone and spent time googling for one’s it didn’t recognise. People went to bed in stages with the very youngest first, the oldest second and the ‘we’ve still got it’ middle group heading off around 3am still humming about not liking Mondays.

Saturday was a lovely relaxed and lazy start. There were pancakes, a challenging shower, ham and cheese croissants, DSing, plenty of tea, some chatting, some friendship bracelet making and a trip to the park in the lovely autumn sunshine for frolicking in the falling leaves, clambering on the climbing frame, throwing ‘helicopters’ (sycamores) to see where the wind took them, ritual killing of harlequin ladybirds and returning to the Manor singing ‘The Court of King Caracucticus’ with a brief educational interlude to observe the visible marking of pieces for a very old kit house.

Back at the house I predicted that Babs’ 3.30pm eta would be 4.15pm and was proved spookily right – Babs and I clearly have a spooky pyschic thing going on ;). Either that or our later speculation that she infact controls the whole group in the style of a big board game, that we are all her pawns and she prods effigies of us about with a big stick on a map secreted in her house somewhere while laughing in an evil manner about how we are all just her puppets…. 😆

So Babs and co arrived, followed by Merry. There was a frenzy of pasta / sandwich / pizza making and then it was time to head off to the swimming pool. The party went really well – everyone in the water seemed to have a ball, it’s a nice, clean pool with the cafe area on a mezzanine floor overlooking so we got to watch them while laying out the food. Nice to put some faces to names of some of Michelle’s local friends and meet some of them again. The food went very quickly – never underestimate the hunger of children after swimming!

Grapes and carrots were trodden into the floor, the candles on the cake were lit, blown out and cake cut and distributed, rubbish cleared, floor swept and lots of us headed back to M,M&C’s for post party drinking, chatting and playing. Really nice to see several more friends and a very nice evening was had.

It may have been quite late before the last of us went to bed again… 😳

Sunday and on that basis it may have been quite late before we were seen again! :lol:Even Ady slept in.

A nice lazy morning with yet more tea drinking, chatting and generally enjoying being with friends. We had lunch and then headed off. Davies had a fantastic weekend but Scarlett struggled a bit today, she is pretty good at being self sufficient but was missing Davies and didn’t much like having to compete for his attention. All was well as soon as we got in the car and they connected on their DS’s while watching Star Wars on the dvd player. Scarlett has ever such a lot of Ady in her but she most certainly doesn’t have his people pleasing gene and is far more likely to have my more Marmite effect of people loving or hating her with an added side order of my ‘and if you don’t like me you know what you can do…’ attitude too. She does tend to expect Davies to love her though and is understandably upset when his friends are less keen to have Davies’ little sister hanging around. I understand this is really hard for her when the games they are playing are ones she plays at home with Davies and *their* friends but I also don’t want him to feel responsible for Scarlett. Fortunately she was easily appeased with some time with Ady, the joys of the ice machine gadget on the fridge and some colour changing pens so she spent a fair bit of time last night and today on her own eshewing the variety of other children available to play with.

We said goodbye about 2pm and headed for home. A very smooth journey in under 2 hours through various weather conditions but without any stops at all. Ady said he didn’t think he’d used his brakes for the entire journey. The cat had left marks of her displeasure with us going away but it was speedily cleaned up, the kids had a bath and then ate their dinner watching a variety of Family Entertainment TV shows, I closeted myself away to catch up on X Factor online and then had a bath myself, Ady rather wonderfully cooked dinner for all, in shifts and we ate watching the Electric Dreams 1980s which we found very entertaining.

In all a fabulous weekend, we all really enjoyed it (Scarlett being very stoical about the bits she hadn’t liked and saying there was loads more she loved so it was still a good weekend) and thanks to all for wonderful company and to Marcus, Michelle and Chloe for their fab hosting as always and their wonderful glassware.