T-Bird Anni Rides Again

not a hope of remembering everything but I’ll have a go

 Saturday

Set off a bit later than planned (ROFL, what’s new?) having run back into the house several times to grab forgotten items.  Got as far as the M6 (so, taht’s about 20 minutes then) and it all ground to a halt.  Actually, I’m surprised how small the jam was considering I found out the next day taht it was caused by a fatal at 6am that morning with the motorway not being re-opened until just after mid day!  But anyway, we were close enough to the services to get off the road and have a very early lunch and buy a replacement birthday pressie for the one that we had left at home   Thanks to my Daisy player also being capable of playing normal CDs, we were entertained by the very mellow voice of Stphen Fry reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to us whilst we waited for the motorway to look good enough to join again and off we went. Once we had got to Jo’s tehre was a brief second when we saw each other’s children before they dissappeared into the garden.   Then there was a very lovely tea and eventually there were attempts at getting 3 small children to go to sleep (yeh right…) and we did a bit of party preparation as blogged by Jo.

Sunday

As also blogged by Jo, Sunday was rather busy!  Aprilia didn’t much like how noisy and crowded the service was so we sat out in the sunshine to listen to it whilst chatting to the headmaster who was very proudly telling me how good his school was   Then she went off to the kids club bit and I carried on enjoying the sunshine!  the afternoon was taken up with the party which involved 8 small girls charging round the garden over "horse jumps" and various grown ups sitting in the shade chatting.  Just my kind of day really!  Suday night Aprilia declared that Jade had kept her awake the night before talking (okay, you can stop laughing now, I know exactly how improbable that statement sounded!) so could she sleep in my room.  On the grounds that Jade looked like she needed an undisturbed nights sleep without my chatting child, I agreed!

Monday

Set off for Nic’s midmorning and had a lovely scenic beginning to the journey, and the M25 was the clearest I’ve ever seen it.  Mr Fry continued to entertain us with his reading of Harry.  Once more I seemed to lose my offspring fairly shortly on arrival with my host, this time though the lure wasn’t swings but chicks!  And once more there were a few problems getting them all to go to sleep at the end of the day!  Nic and I agreed that actually baths at bedtime are really useless as a calming down tool as they wash the tiredness off them, giving them a whole new lease of life    The evening passed very pleasantly with pizza and wine and chatting although I do suspect that really 1am was a little late for bedtime!!!!

Tuesday

Children continued to play, grown ups continued to gossip, extra grown up plus children arrived to keep the playing going and Monster and Aprilia played DS games together.  Then there was a lovely time on the beach.  Monster and Teeny went off for swimming lessons and we stayed enjoying the novelty of a beach with Aprilia making determined efforts to drown herself and me imagining headlines like "Home Educated Child Drowns Whilst Mother Tries to Explain Tides to Her"  Suffice to say she didn’t manage to drown herself but did learn how to body surf the hard way!  Then we queued for what felt like hours in the local chippy, was nice to have freshly cooked chippy tea but somehow I thought the idea of a chippy was that it was all thre ready to serve?  Ah well!  After that it was back in the car and off home.   The journey was fine and I even remembered to refuel, grab drinks and make sure we both went to the loo before the nearly 90 mile stretch with no further services (it does amuse me that there is a huge sign saying "No Services" on one of the motorways, but only once you ahve gone past the last place wehre you could actually have stopped….)  There was more Harry (we finished the book and went back to disc 1) and then she fell asleep and I was hugely grateful for the can of Relentless which gave me a sudden surge of energy to counteract the sleepy vibes wafting from the back seat.  Finally home at midnight, Duke hlaf carried Aprilia to bed (she sort of woke up but not really) and we weren’t far behind her.

Yesterday

Much sleepy droopiness from both of us.  Aprilia made up a game for Rainbows which they all enjoyed and which covers a clause in her Home Skills badge about recycling but then had an utter wobbly meltdown about explaining how to play it so sat in the kitchen at the hall eating the Mother’s Union’s brown sugar (!!!!!!) I was supposed to be at a meeting but she fell apart again and pointd out that family is mor important than meetings and she wanted me to stay home with her.  Seemed fair to me (cos I wasn’t too fussed about missing the meeting anyway!) so early nights all round.

So, a very lovely time had by all, many thanks to our friends!  I have a vague idea that I may ahve performed the impossible and not left anything behind but I suppose thre’s time yet to realise that I did!