Catching Up/Manic Sunday

Sunday was spent catching up with a variety of people.

The day started with a family breakfast, all 3 kids, dh and I in the same place, at the same time, rarity these days. Eggs, Bacon and Blueberry Pancakes for all bar dd1, who insisted on Chocolate Brioche instead? 4 year olds eh! Oh and lots of lovely orange juice, got us all set for the day.

Dh and son headed for work, whilst the girls and I headed for McArthurGlen http://www.eastmidlandsdesigneroutlet.com/consumer.asp to meet Carol and Mike for coffee, catch up and the latest edition to our family, Carols old bike, which is getting no use from her, so she's loaned it to me in a semi-permanent move :-) I just need to get two new inner tubes and we're in business, yay.
A good vanilla latte later, with a spot of fruity toast, plus smoothies for the girls, we set about on a wander about, pausing mainly at the play area, where dd1 met a friend from nursery, which made the whole trip even better for her. She also got to spend her hard earned cash on Plasticine, which some fabulous sculpture work came out of later in the day too.

The afternoon saw me making Cheesecake in preparation for my friends coming over in the evening, but 1st we had dd1's nursery friends to contend with. The two girls and a boy arrived in due course and they set about playing, mainly nicely for the whole, just a small wobble from dd1, when she realised she had to share all her stuff with them, but she soon got over that. They all stayed for tea, then I took two of them home, whilst H, dd1's 'boyfriend' stayed later, as agreed, so his parents could get to see Iron Man (what a fabulous film) I left dh with instructions to get them in the bath, whilst I was gone (yeah like that happened).

A small run to a close by village, and up a wiggly road in the middle, 'bakers hill' which I later discovered was named as such as in days gone by, the community bread oven was at the top of it, where the whole village went daily to get their bread/bake it! One child was dropped off and the other on the run back into town a few minutes later.

Upon arrival home, the kids were still not in the bath, and of course the next set of people, my old friends Liz and Jackie, and Jackies Dh Kevin, arrived. I'm not quite sure what they made of the chaos that greeted them, but they treated it with good will, and approximately two hours later, we'd managed to pack all the kids to bed and Meridian and dh had met my friends, slurped a coffee, then extracted a very happy and excited son to his home. At this point we put Pizza in the oven for the starving and munched the remainder of the tea I'd also produced earlier with dual purpose for the kids (dips, cucumber, peppers, cold sausages, pesto pasta, cheese and of course the cheese cakes! I'll post the recipe soon)

We spent a lovely evening chatting amongst ourselves about life the universe and everything. It was nice to meet Kevin, Jackies dh, as if you're a reader of this blog, you'll realise we've not met before, as Jackie and I have only recently got back in touch after about 15 years of no communication, again just due to life, the universe and everything. I'd also missed Jackies BBQ on Saturday for her birthday, as we'd all concluded that the kids wouldn't stand the rain and Jackies house, didn't need a party plus our 3 manic kids being bored in it. So was very happy she'd made the effort to come over and see us, when we'd so spectacularly let her down the day before on her birthday.

As you can see it was a manic Sunday, but a lovely one, what better way to spend a day than with friends.