That poor cat!

Saturday
An early start to the morning to get everything packed in the car and Davies and Scarlett to Wildlife Explorers for 10am. We did it but we cut it fine ;).

The weather was really misty and a bit grey and horrid and as we didn’t really want to get muddy walking round and then go to the party straight afterwards Ady and I finally had the sitting in the cafe for the hour experience we’ve been plotting since the kids first started going 6 months ago. Ady refused to let me buy cake and we did initially choose a very wonky table which had half our drinks swimming in the saucers when I bumped it as we sat down but we moved tables and thoroughly enjoyed pretending to be grown ups for an hour :).

The children were learning about owls – they dissected an owl pellet, watched a film about owls and did some owl based activities. They enjoyed it and brought out the programme for the next 3 months which looks full of interesting things. It’s a really well run group :).

Being that extra half an hour the wrong way meant the journey to Chris and Helen’s felt even longer. I always get the other side of the Dartford crossing and expect to be nearly there for some reason which of course isn’t the case at all. We pulled up behind Jan and Jonathan and were very confused by the long dark haired girl emptying the boot until we realised it was Megan with much darker and longer hair than last time we saw her.

We were immediately swallowed up into the houseful of friends, it appeared to wine o’clock as soon as we arrived and there was plenty of food. I’m sure there will be many pictures and blog accounts of it but it was just lovely. Friends, happy children playing together, gorgeous sunshine – the perfect recipe for a fab day. 🙂

I loved watching the mad stripped off small girls in the paddling pool and the ever morphing and changing groups of children playing together and changing from one interesting real life conversation to another with so many friends :).

As it got dark and most people retired indoors (there was a small hard core of adults and children including everyone who lives at my house, who remained outside long after it got dark ;)) before eventually everyone not staying the night had headed off for home or nearby hosts, the children had gone to bed if not to sleep and the adults went to the lounge to discuss swans, cock of a bull stories and many more interesting and slightly surreal things. I think we all learnt something (difference between a grasshopper and a cricket anyone? Who did sing ‘I think we’re alone now’? And there’s more!) before the fairly early by our standards bedtime of about 130am. Several children were still awake and infact several never did go to sleep. Davies says he heard the bell chime for 3am but doesn’t remember 4am.

Sunday
Even the ones who did go to sleep awoke again fairly early keen to not waste a single minute of their time together on pursuits such as sleeping 😉

We were all back out in the garden again taking tea and coffee and cake on the terrace for a nice relaxed morning. I love that bit of the get togethers 🙂 I got a text mid-morning inviting us to go and eat meat at Marcus and Michelle’s house on our way home which we very gratefully accepted.:)

We had a lovely few hours there along with Kirsty, James and co too celebrating ‘early easter’ with a fabulous roast lamb cooked by Marcus, pre-easter egg hunt in the garden for the kids courtesy of the easter bunny 😉 and mini eggs with our after dinner tea and coffee. 🙂

We reluctantly set off around 5pm for home although I think Scarlett would have happily stayed another week. Davies was showing distinct signs of overtiredness by then but thankfully he had some good behaviour in hand from earlier this week so he didn’t lose too many points ;). Tarly did sleep for about half an hour in the car but Davies didn’t.

We got home around 7pm, put the chickens away, gave the kids a bath and hairwash and some toast and packed them off to bed. I think Davies finally went to sleep about 930pm when I took his pen and paper away from him so he’d stop drawing.

We’ve had baths, watched Lost, I’ve spent some time battling with flickr which doesn’t seem to want to play nice tonight. We’ve got Lynda and Stuart arriving tomorrow for two nights so I’m off to make the most of my own bed before going back to the camping mat and sleeping bags again tomorrow.

Thanks all for a truly fantastic weekend 🙂 Will add pics in as and when I get them uploaded.