have you heard?

Michael Jackson’s dead!

Davies and I stayed up til nearly 3am watching the news on Friday morning. So we didn’t get up too early on Friday morning and were slightly relieved to have an email from Tasha cancelling our weather dependent plans to meet up at the paddling pool at the park. Instead we had a quiet morning at home. Davies and Scarlett watched some Ray Mears dvds and I did various online-y things like tax my car and do the food shopping. How 21st century am I? And I first heard about Michael Jackson on facebook. True fact. I’m practically a young person, me 🙂

Ady came home at lunchtime to pick us up and dropped us off in Chichester for a couple of hours to wander round the shops. We had a lovely time looking in the posh charity shops (I bought a top, everything else was more expensive than at regular shops), we spent ages in the Lush shop as I owed the kids something each from last time we were in London and had to run past the Victoria branch as the train was at the platform but I’d promised them something each from there on the way home. Davies chose some wobbly bath jelly but Scarlett took ages, seriously we must have been in there nearly half an hour saying ‘but everything is just sooo lovely, I just can’t choose!’ 😆 She eventually selected some soap.

There were some young people from a church in Portsmouth giving out helium balloons and leaflets from their church so the kids each got a ‘balloon from Jesus’ :lol:They both popped though so who knows what celestial message someone was trying to send us 😉

We then went and pretended to be posh in Starbucks and had a frappucino each. They were cold enough to give us all brain freeze so we took them outside and walked along to the cathedral to sit outside in the sunshine and drink them. The balloons were still fine then so they ran around with them for a while and then asked to go inside the cathedral for a look round.

We were greeted at the entrance and given leaflets and guides and had a very peaceful half an hour or so looking at the beautiful stained glass windows, stone carvings and other gorgeous architecture. We out money in the box and lit candles and just enjoyed being in such a gorgeous, historical building.

Ady rang as we left there to say he would pick us up in half and hour so we walked slowly to where he was picking us up from and then we went to his work for the end of season barbecue. Because the workload is so huge during the ‘season’ they employ lots of foreign temps for the duration and every year they have a big barbecue to say thank you and good bye to them all before they leave. It’s also a celebration for the regular workers that they have survived another season :). In previous years Ady and I have gone without Davies and Scarlett or Ady has gone alone but this year they were extending the invitation to families too and had arranged a bouncy castle and other child friendly stuff so we all went.

I was very happily entertained by some of Ady’s colleagues – Tom, who supplies our game and who’s parents have the amazing house where we’ve done fishing and shooting, Brett who I behaved badly with at the wedding last year and lastly Fergie, who is my most favourite of Ady’s colleagues and I’m always happy to be in the company of :). There was wine and good food and crap music and a very good time was had by all.

Davies and Scarlett had a great time on the bouncy castle, especially when they worked out if they laid the power pack down the castle deflated enough for them to climb onto the middle strut and then an adult would put it back up again and it would reinflate taking them with it and hang upside down from it 😆 Scarlett went one better and managed to climb onto the roof while it was down which took her about 20 foot up on the roof when it went back up again. Ady looked a bit scared but she insisted it was fun! 😆

Ady and I both mastered some plate spinning sets which had been brought although neither of us were brave or stupid enough to try the unicycle 😆 We finally left about 1030pm and got home at 1130. Davies and Scarlett went straight to bed and I wasn’t far behind.

Today I was working so I left the house with only Ady up. There was a Community Fayre happening in Lancing to celebrate the opening of a new childrens and family centre on the site of an old school and the library had a stand there. I went over first thing to help set the stand up and then went back to the library. I did some work on some displays and spent some time on the counter. Ady, Davies and Scarlett came in on their way to the Fayre where several of the regular borrowers commented on how much like me Scarlett looks. I said I thought she was much more like Ady to look at but certainly has my temprament! 😉

I walked over to the fayre at 1pm to join them and walked round the various stands there.They had a fair trade food stall, a Love Food, Hate Waste stand giving away freebies of portion control measurers, a health awareness team for smoking, drinking and healthy eating which had some very powerful messages about the effect on lungs from smoking, a babies bottle filled with tar to show the effects of smoking parents and a pair of ‘beer goggles’ to try on to walk along a line wearing to see the effects. They were quite trippy!

Davies and Scarlett both decorated T shirts – Davies did a fab all over design of a chicken which got lots of compliments and then Davies went over to see Thesus who was there (from the drumming thing at the library the other day) who instantly recognised him, cleared the drums for him and introduced him to everyone as ‘this kid I met the other day who’s a genius!’. He and Davies spent ages playing together and he hoiked Ady over too to tell him what a cool kid he has :). Davies was very chuffed.

Sian, who I work with wandered over with her Dad and daughter too so we chatted to them for a while.I helped dismantle the stall and we had a quick wander round Lancing before coming home via Wicks for some sandpit sand.

Davies and Scarlett played in the sand and water in the garden, Ady tidied the garage, I sat in the garden with my book and a glass of cider for a while before being overcome with tiredness and coming back inside to fall asleep for an hour on the sofa 😳

Our shopping delivery came while the kids were in the bath so we put all that away and Ady cooked dinner along with a Michael Jackson tribute evening in the kitchen on his MP3 player.

We’ve had a spate of vandalism the last 2 weekends along our road so I’ve been sitting up slightly late and already banged on the window once at a group of kids who climbed over our wall and were about to go on the kids’ slide. They’ve walked past twice more since although it seems to have gone quiet now, so maybe another 10 minutes and then bedtime.