I feel busy, oh so busy…

And I missed yesterday too. So,

Yesterday morning the cooking fest continued, then a trip to the post office for further ebay parcel sending and then Sainsburys for some more baking ingredients.

Over to the park to meet Lucy, Rebecca and Richard who had already been there for nearly an hour without knowing whether we were coming thanks to Lucy’s mobile phone not being about her person to pass on my text message. We had a play on the slightly quieter play equipment than last week but it wasn’t long before the children tired of that and wandered further afield. This week we trailed along behind them for a while but when they started to scatter and disappear in different directions we decided to call it a day at the park and had a race back to our house.

The children all played really well, if very noisily while Lucy and I chatted. I had ordered the Wallace and Gromit Were Rabbit OST as a birthday present for Davies to be given to him early to use as music at the party so when Lucy, R & R went home that was listened to for at least the 4th time that day. The children really enjoyed listening, working out what bit of the film it was the soundtrack to and which instruments were playing. We have got the Monsters Inc and Toy Story soundtracks which they have always enjoyed listening to and doing the same with but we’ve not listened to them for ages.

The children were both really tired having been up until 9pm ish the night before and having run around lots during the day so they were both asleep by 7.30pm. I did yet more baking including the two victoria sponge cakes ready for icing as Davies’ birthday cakes. I had a lovely curry and made all the party bags while watching The Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind on dvd which I thought was an excellent film. Had various phone chats with Ady who was away for the night and spent about an hour trying to sort my internet connection out.

Davies crept into my bed sometime in the middle of the night as he very often does when Ady is away and Tarly woke us around 7am. We all got up and they played with the toy cars and animals while I had another go at sorting the internet out. Then we were actually out of the house for 9.30am to go to the party venue to collect the keys and make any final arrangements – I’ve got the hall booked from earlier in the day now so party guests can arrive there from about 2pm onwards. From there we went to collect the Susumama order which having left the routefinder to I found by almost pure fluke – oh and the great big pink Susumama van outside the house. And what a fantastically cool house it was – ordinary street, very middle class south coast seaside town on the outside, possibly the most dramatic houses I’ve ever been inside on the inside. Massive and cavernous with an amazing view of the sea out the back, very little furniture but loads of jewel coloured floor cushions, amazingly textured walls and ceilings with stacks of plants, ornaments and sculptures and a real ‘worldwide’ feel. We had a brief chat about Home Ed and education generally and I reluctantly turned down a cup of tea as the children were in full on picking stuff up and asking what it was mode but I promised to go back to collect the next order and I will ensure I go without the children so I can linger awhile longer, maybe see a bit more of her house and talk to her more about all her festival going and travelling – very interesting and cool woman is Susumama lady :-).

We left there and went to Ali’s for the first time in ages, we’ve managed lots of instant message chats to keep abreast of each others’ lives but real life contact has been low so it was nice to catch up properly and let the children do their thing too. We had a walk – which both Freya and Tarly managed to draw blood on and saw some very anti-social goats, they played in various combinations – including Scarlett and Freya for longer than possibly ever before which was nice to watch. Tarly had her first ever go on an xbox playing a Barbie game (what else!) which was very cute to watch – Davies then saw her cute and raised her an adorable by promising to count all the money in his moneybox and buy her a Barbie game if he had enough money. Awww. 🙂 Davies then played a W&G game on there with lots of support and back up from Freya – who we may need to borrow Ali for techinical support next week when he gets his :-).

On the way home we listened to Terrible Tudors and all sang along then the children picked up their game of cars and dinosaurs again while I started to decorate the cakes. My Mum called by to drop off 4 pairs of ‘wrong trousers’ for one of the party games and while she was still here Ady returned from Cambridge. Final party preparation, a tidy up and dinner later and here we are.

Tomorrow I have Lucy and Em round at some point, followed by the arrivals of Chris F and Katy B so I’ve a feeling it might be a back after the weekend moment about now.