Party Prep a go-go

I worked this morning. Due to Richard being poorly yesterday (hope he’s much improved today Lucy and none of the rest of you are suffering x) Ady stayed home to be with Davies and Scarlett. I carried on with my display from Saturday and other than something to fill a strip along the bottom which I want to do some letters spelling ‘Merry Christmas’ for but ran out of time it’s all done. I said I’d do the letters at home and D and S can help then which they’ll love knowing it’s on public display :). Actually we have a largeish display space in the library which you can book and I’ve been pondering booking it for Davies and letting him display his artwork in it next year. We get a variety of stuff on it, the local amdram group uses it to advertise their productions and we often get things like voluntary work recruitment for one thing or another and we have one or two local artists who put up displays of their art. Ady is bringing Davies and Scarlett into the library tomorrow night so I’ll show him the space and see what he thinks.

At home Scarlett had been doing ‘Christmas pictures’ which mostly involved liberally coating paper with glue and then sprinkling lots of glitter on it, but she’d had fun and made pretty outcomes :). I abandoned them to the kitchen and I think they carried on playing with toy animals and the pens and paper but I didn’t come back into the lounge until I brought their tea in and they’d cleared everything up by then :). I spent a very unsatisfactory hour or so making pink buttercream and trying to ice Scarlett’s teddybear cake. The recipe and design I was semi-following called for piped on icing and I’d got a piping bag, however it was crap and all the icing kept coming through the seams of the bag so I quickly gave up on that idea and using (very clean) fingers I iced it by hand for the first coat. I’ve since done some googling and got instructions to make one from greaseproof paper so I’m planning to have another go tomorrow as it needs another coat of icing regardless. Scarlett, Davies, Ady and my Dad all assure me it is looking like a teddy though so I am reassured enough to keep going with it and not give up and insist she just has a round cake with five candles instead! 😆

Dad came over to mind Scarlett while I took Davies to Badgers as Ady had shot off to do a few appointments when I got home and knew he would struggle to get back in time. There are lots of things going on with my parents’ relationship at the moment, not all of which I am privy to full details on and plenty of which I am getting their own personal side of the story and cobbling together what I assume to be the truth in the middle – I pity my brother living with them more than ever just now. I have felt my relationship with my Dad has suffered the last year or so since he’s been looking after Davies and Scarlett and where he would often appear once or twice during the week he’s not just turned up for months other than the scheduled looking after the children visits and then always seemed very keen to dash off again. So today when he arrived nearly 90 minutes before I’d said I needed him to be here I was very pleasantly surprised and said so. He’s also made real efforts with Davies and Scarlett when looking after him the last couple of times as I’d mentioned how much Davies had enjoyed playing board games with him and he has done so every time since. So he was chatty, had a coffee and talked to the children while I finished in the kitchen and even helped them tidy up. Ady said he stayed for another coffee and further chatting when he got in about half an hour after Davies and I left, so that was good. 🙂

I think the whole of the Badgers session was practising for the carol concert at the weekend, the final dress rehearsal for which Davies will have to miss on Saturday but he’s been word perfect since the beginning it being three songs he already knew and I think he is very unlikely to get stage fright or nerves so I’m sure it’ll be fine. Next week is presentation night with badges and certificates handed out (and mulled wine and mince pies) so we’ll all go along for that and the following week is the last one before Christmas and they’re having a cinema night with a dvd showing and everyone bringing along a plate of food to share. Scarlett has been invited along to that to meet the other Badgers before starting back properly with Davies after Christmas. I sat and read in the car. It was cold and dark :(.

Tonight I’ve been making goody bags – so nice to have only about half the amount of children coming as came to Davies’ party :). Tomorrow is more baking and cake decorating, some party games preparation and the finishing of the banner for the display at work and then I’m working in the evening as part of the festive lights switch on late night shopping extravaganza in Lancing.