August and everything after (plus a snippet of July)

It's been a while since my last post, mainly due to the kids summer holidays, which has meant all hands on deck in the shop, running games during the day and night time, whilst also juggling our own 3 kids (ok only 2 are technically mine, but I'm sure ss, will be happy to be included in the equation) and running the larp as well, phew, how do we do it! with exhaustion probably ;-)

I'm actually sat round at Meridians blogging away on her laptop at the moment, whilst babysitting her ds, so bless her for leaving me her internet access, plus access to great coffee and her wonderful apple muffins, which she hasn't blogged about yet, but surely should do as they're scrummy too.

I'm trying to think what we've actually done that's worthy of note during the month, so bear with me whilst I pootle on through.

The end of July saw me, the baby of the school year turn 34. On hand to help me celebrate were Liz and Jackie my old school chums, Merdian, Sarah and Alex, my maternity mates and Sue, my old UPS Pal and ex housemate, a lovely cross section of people from my various points in life. I also got a variety of apologies from other people, who opted out once we discovered I couldn't go out for the night, as it clashed with Magic the Gathering Eventide release at the shop. This was actually good, as not many more people would have fitted comfortably anyway. So instead we had a night in at my house, with pizza, nibbles and several bottles of wine, or none alcholic larger in Sue's case. Jackie kindly regaled everyone with tales of what a pair of minxes we'd been whilst growing up, including several incidents that I cannot remember happening (did I ever use a taxi and leg it down a twitchell (alleyway, or gunell, depending on where your from) without paying the driver :-O) She assures me I did, how embarrassing and slack of me, the things you don't remember when your drunk..... She also reminded me of poor old Oz, who apparently so wanted to be my boyfriend, only he never quite had the courage to ask, so just instead used to put up with me drunkenly snogging him when I'd exhausted my other options of an evening on a Friday night at Rock City.....oh yes, you can rely on your old mates to suitably embarrass you in front of your newer ones. I wonder what happened to the old crew we used to hang about with? neither of us see any of them anymore, yet we all spent a good 3-6 years in their company, before we stopped clubbing and drinking quite so much and got on with our lives.

Dh took me to see the latest Batman at the new Showcase Cinema De Lux for my birthday and it was lovely, now that is the way to do cinema. May I highly recommend you go and see both the film and the cinema. We had to do the old showcase the week after for Wall E with the kids and it was like sitting in a smelly cess pit in comparison. Lordy I'm turning into a cinema snob. Afterwards we attempted to go to Nando's for tea, but they decided to close early, thus denied, so we legged it back to our local pub and just scraped in before closing for a quick bite. I think I have a spot of karmic bother with Nando's however as the next time we went there, I was in my heals and went stunningly flat on my face ( keep your eyes on you've been framed for the footage off the cctv) when the nice young man seating us, took me by the hotplates, where the floor was covered in grease, and my legs went completely from under me on a lovely tile floor....good job I know how to land face 1st, or it would have been a very different story on the Suing front, as it was my Aikido and larp training was put to full use in a milli second and I merely stood up and dusted myself off, whilst wondering exactly how stupid I had just looked. The waiter did apologise, but dh for some reason did not get anymoney off the bill when he paid. We will not be visiting that branch again. (Westfield Derby in case your wondering)

DH did the 11 day larp event in Wales during August, whilst I shop sat and looked after the kids, with help from nursery, Meridian, my parents, Becki, Mike and Richard at the shop. Needless to say I am currently running behind with a lot of work, primarily the accounts after this, but I'm slowly catching up.

Dd1 started school the other day, along with Meridians ds and another good friend of her's, so she's happy with it all. In the week prior to her 1st day at 'Big School' she had a morning with her dad, where they went swimming, and then the afternoon with me, where she chose to go to 'Build a Bear' in Derby's Westfield Centre. This cost a small fortune, but at least its another thing that she can ask Santa for clothes for, right! Its quite sad that this is all we could manage with her this year, due to us having started the shop and having to work lots of hours, but hopefully come next year and the following years after all our hard work will pay off and we will be able to take weeks at a time to spend with the kids and hopefully have the money to spend on them too.

Meridian kindly took our dd1 with her ds to Warwick Castle for a lovely day out, before they started school too, so that kind of made up a bit for dd1 having to spend so much of her summer still at nursery. Now that she's at school of course, she's coming straight to the shop afterwards, so seeing more of us too, even if it is a working environment. She's started to do small jobs for us too, earning her pocket money, rather than just getting treats. So I now have a postal helper, who also cleans shelves in the store. She's also tidying her room at home and cleaning her school shoes :-) jobs mean cash prizes.

I guess that's been it really, not much of a summer to write home about, kind of like the weather really, shoddy with the odd snippet of sunshine to brighten up the week.