when you take the blues and make a song…

Lovely weekend. 🙂

Friday night about 2am (well okay then Saturday morning actually) Tarly appeared in our bedroom not really knowing what had woken her – within a few minutes it became apparent it must have been the first crack of thunder in a terrific thunderstorm. There was almost constant, blue, sheet lightning with loads of really loud thunder and after about half an hour a huge downpour of rain. So Tarly, Ady and I all hung out of our bedroom window watching for about half an hour, then got back into bed and arranged all the pillows so we could sit up in bed and watch. It was a good hour before I fell asleep and it was still rumbling on even then.

Which meant I didn’t actually get up on Saturday morning until nearly 10.30am and Ady, who had been up since about 7am with the children was dozing on the sofa. So our planned fairly early getaway was doomed really. And then while I was upstairs packing an overnight bag for us all the sky turned black once again and easily the most dramatic thunderstorm since I was a little girl proceeded to happen right overhead. The house was shaking with the thunder, there was pouring rain and hailstones, Ady stood on the front door step for about half an hour trying – and failing – to get a picture of the lightning, Candle – the non blind cat – who is terrified of storms dashed round the house trying to find hiding places and the children were utterly thrilled with every bit of it. Ady told them about counting between the lightning and the thunder to see how far away the storm was until finally there was no gap between them as it was right above us and pretty much constant rounds of both. So a bit of talk about speed of light and sound, why the sky went dark, what causes thunder and lightning and a recounting of a story from my childhood when hailstones as big as golf balls fell and smashed loads of greenhouses locally. Ady’d got his car back on Thursday so we needed to put the children’s car seats back in to it and decided to wait until the really heavy rain had passed over to do so.

So we finally set off about 45 minutes later than planned and promptly ran into loads of traffic. After an hour or so we decided to change our route and I had to plot a new one on a map cutting across the country by A roads. Which made me irrationally cross, not because I hate reading maps – I’m actually quite good at it, I just hate having stuff on my lap in the car, and Ady’s atlas is one of those enormous ones that you need two people’s laps to open it across 😆 So I was all sulky and petulant, particularly when I confessed the real reason for not wanting to read the map to Ady and he laughed at me for a full five minutes!

So we spent a lovely afternoon and evening with Chris and Alison. Ady went off to a work party a few motorway junctions further along, Layla, Si and Claudia came along too and we had a really nice time. 🙂 The children did some very scientfic experiments with strawberries in the microwave and spent time in the paddling pool, Lulah and Tarly spent time outside collecting small creatures and pitting them in race against each other, Lije finally convinced Davies in the joys of the X box by virtue of having a W&G game. We had a neccesarily lazy morning with a variety of bagels and reading of horoscopes (necessary due to my hangover :oops:) before heading for home around midday via Costco to stock up on bulk buys of washing powder, peanut butter and coffee.

This afternoon has been quiet with the children taking forever to go to sleep despite being really tired and a lovely roast beef dinner tonight.

This week has something planned for every day but fairly low key, with a visit to Lucy’s tomorrow during the day and the last Badgers of the term tomorrow evening.