Said Scarlett about Eve and Rei this morning while we were making their birthday cards and wrapping up their presents! Ady’s heard a similar quote about The Proclaimers (obviously brothers rather than sisters) but it really made me laugh to hear Scarlett say it with total sincerity! 😆 It’s not even like she’s not used to twins, but I guess it’s a measure of how little she considers any of the twins we see lots of as twins or even siblings and more that she sees them all as individuals, maybe.
A bit of a frantic morning with me faffing about with houseworky stuff and then realising we needed to leave the house in about half an hour and the children were still in pjs and we hadn’t made cards or wrapped gifts yet. They were dispatched to making one card each – thankfully no rows over who made who’s – Davies claimed Rei’s and Scarlett was more than happy to do Eve’s. Davies drew a tiger and a rainbow for Rei as he ‘knows they are her two favourite things’ and Scarlett drew a picture of a person who was not Eve for a while but then became Eve after all. 😆 They both wrote inside them – Davies with me just calling out which letter came next and Scarlett with a bit of me showing her, a bit of her telling me she knew that letter and a bit of looking at what Davies had written which was a faintly chaotic few minutes with me calling out different letters to them both – they both did really well though, while I sellotaped lots of paper together to wrap the presents and then wrote ‘Eve’ and ‘Rei’ all over them in crayons. I managed to remember bottled water and changes of clothing but failed miserably on bringing food other than a packet of rice cakes. Thankfully Lucy had brought sufficient food for four children so that failing wasn’t a problem.
We stopped for petrol and then collected Lucy and The Rs before heading off to Ipswich. Similar to when we drove to Nottingham just to see The Gruffalo for Ben’s birthday last year driving 300 miles and spending about 7 hours in the car for the sake of 4 hours with friends does seem a little crazy really but worth it to see those friends and for the children to have such a good time. Ady had handed over his Sat nav so we used that to navigate us there which was fine until the A12 was closed due to an accident which meant we had to make a decision about which way to go. We thought we’d cracked it with a road which seemed to run parallel to the A12 until I foolishly listened to the sat nav telling us to take a left, followed by another left … you get the idea. Although we didn’t actually end up back where we started, we drove through a small village and suddenly the traffic started moving again and we were back on the A12. Mileage wise we didn’t seem to have gone too far out of our way and when the sat nav got bored of telling us to ‘take a u turn as soon as possible’ with four children and two adults yelling back at it (Scarlett at one point called it a ‘bloody thing!’ but none of us acknowledged it :lol:) it surrended and gave us directions in front of us rather than behind. It did sterling work guiding us to the actual party destination in Ipswich though – I’m converted and impressed with it. 🙂
All of the children were really good considering it was a very hot day, we spent a lot of time in a car and aside from Richard getting himself into a state just before we arrived and Davies and Scarlett having a few very minor sibling spats – oh and Davies managing to stay awake even when all the other children had fallen asleep and wanting to chatter to Lucy and I on the way home, they all were really well behaved. Seasoned travellers 🙂
The party venue was great, fairly new I think, a big soft play shack place which Davies and Scarlett instantly disappeared into and were swallowed up for an hour without me catching more than a fleeting glimpse of them, then we all went back to Em’s house for tea, a fab spread of party food and lots of running round the garden. D&S were delighted with their rabbit and tortoises (very cute, I love tortoises 🙂 ) and I got to catch up with Chris & Helen and Em. We could have happily stayed for hours more but I was very aware of the drive infront of us so we left just before 6pm and had a really good run home, dropping Lucy and The Rs home and getting back here before 9pm. Ady presented the children with a bath, me with a can of red bull followed by a pint of cider and a lovely dinner. The children took ages to get to sleep, Scarlett having slept for over an hour in the car and Davies just full of everything he’d done and seen today but now the house is quiet aside from a Buzz Lightyear toy which goes off for no apparent reason every so often on a constant loop of ‘Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger’ and ‘To infinity, and beyond!’ which I may have to throw in the garage before I go to bed!
Some photos on flickr, all of which seem to have red eye which I can’t be bothered to sort out just now, I see Em’s already flickr’d and I’m sure Helen won’t be far behind. Thanks for a lovely day Em, hope Eve and Rei have a fab birthday tomorrow and thanks to Lucy for the company (and petrol fund!) on the drive. 🙂