Saturday morning seemed to drift past us with playing (children) and drinking tea and chatting (adults). Kirsty and I went through her seed stash and she very kindly passed some on to me ready for spring sowing. We had lunch and then Kirsty and I went up to the allotment with the four children leaving Ady and James behind. They watched Band of Brothers (loudly, I suspect) and enjoyed an hour or so of childfree time to make up for the fact that later they did swimming while Kirsty and I did not.
The allotment was muddy but continuing to have sprouting leeks, onions and garlic and I was proud to show it off to my first visitors :).
The children were enjoying being out and about so we had a walk through the woodland and up onto the downs from where there are lovely panoramic sea views to the south and rolling downs to the north. We decided it was an official Autumn Walk and not only that it was an Impromptu One 😆 .We found some sloes and brought some home to double check – I want to clarify for sure but if they are we have a rich supply of them to forage and do some making stuff with 🙂 aswell as a great looking walk to explore a bit more just up from the allotment. The girls made friends with plenty of dogs and the fresh air and exercise perked us all up.
Back home for more tea drinking before we all gathered ourselves together and headed up to Reading for Claudia’s birthday party. It was a straightforward drive up and we were actually about half an hour early so went in to sit down and wait. Si and Layla arrived not long afterwards followed by various other attendees. Ady and the children went off to swim, I stayed to chat with various non-swimming grown ups and did some assisting of laying out food. It’s a great party venue with a fab recreational pool. Davies and Scarlett adore being in the water anyway, are really adventurous and quite happy to get chucked underwater and thrown about and splashed so they were in their element. Ady was amazed at Davies’s progress since last he was in a swimming pool with him and enjoyed it loads too.
Lovely to see all the children fall straight back into their rhythm with each other and greet their friends as though they’d seen them only yesterday. Davies and Scarlett mostly ate chocolate and crisps and mostly drank coke just as you are supposed to do I guess when you’re a kid at a birthday party ;). In receipt of fab goody bags (they *loved* their books, thanks Layla and Si) we headed back off again at 830pm.
Despite the lack of sleep from the night before, fresh air and swimming pool both children remained resolutely awake all the way home and played their DSs. We got home about 1015 having driven through some godawful weather with loads of broken down vehicles by the road side. Got the children straight into pjs and up to bed although it was still about midnight by the time the four of them got to sleep again. Kirsty and James arrived home about 10 minutes behind us so Marcus and Alex joined them upstairs while Kirsty and James joined us downstairs with more wine and nibbles. We ignored the TV in favour of youtube for various things including the fantastic Johan Lippowitz Torn mime, some Peter Kay, James Blunt on sesame street and finally Men Behaving Badly. Very funny evening :). It was about 230am before bed I think. But then sleep is for sleepy people… 😆