Barbara’s 75th Birthday (by sarah)

Barbara has turned 75! three quarters of a centry so we baked her cake and made some sandwitches and told her to invite some people to dinner.

The cake was chocolate cake with lots of topping as she had said she likes lots of topping! I also put chocolate chips and things on it 🙂 It was obviously a 75 - Barbara confessed she was scared I'd made a watering can or something tacky like that :/

The cake went down well even if Barbara had phoned Mary in a panic and got her to bring a cake round as I had planned to make the cake Sunday morning so it would be nice and fresh and as there was no obvious finished cake Sunday morning Barbara was panicking she'd have nothing to feed her guests.

(we were at a Wedding the night before in London!)

Barbara's friend Hanna brought a balloon round for Jean which was an instant hit!

And then it was presant time!

The Dutera is a pretty plant but came with a warning that it has poisonous bits so to watch Jean.

It seemed to go very well.

Rainbow Sky (by sarah)

Yesturday after Barbara's birthday party just as everybody was leaving a rainbow arched through the sky - you could see both ends of it - one behind the mill and the other up by Manscourt at the top of the hill. There was also a faint double rainbow for part of the time.

Minni In the Flower Pot (by sarah)

Minni is always getting right where she shouldn't be which includes sitting on my land cress - it is now a doomed plant. I'm afraid she did get shouted at.

Silly puss mog!

A Belated Fathers Day (by sarah)

Becuase Jean had her friend around yesturday we organised to have Father's Day today as a suprise for Al (only slightly blown to bits by me obviously baking and Jean asking Daddy was she still going to decorate cakes with me!).

So we made a cake - its suposed to be a rocket but didn't quiet come out as planned - I think either I'm going nuts or the cooker is calibrated wrong - I insinerated my dinner the other night and even though I tribble checked the times for things managed to burn the cake and then forget to leave it too cool before turning it out onto the cooling racks :/

I also failed to make enough icing and made a hash of putting it on the cake anyway. Jean chose the colours so yes there is a lot of pink for a fathers day rocket and yes those are little pink hearts!

But we had fun making it 🙂

Jean also gave Daddy his card and presant she had made at pre-school.

Unfortunatly Al is in trouble with Barbara for not mowing the lawn this evening :/ And I mucked up her watering system which she told me to use earlier this evening.

But I think Alaric liked his cake - there are a lot of little fairy cakes Jean decorated too!

How I made the cake will hopefully soon appear on Salaric Cooking though I think it probably belongs on Cake Wreck to be honest!

Best Friends (by sarah)

For months now Jean has always gone on about the same best friend at pre-school and has been non-stop asking if she can have her round to play so I made a little card saying friends on it showing a cluster of cartoon animals and left it at the pre-school for Eves mummy.

We didn't hear anything for a while and I felt sad that Jean wasn't getting to have her friends round but then it turned out mum had just been very busy and we arrange for the girls to play today.

They turned up - little brother in tow and though both girls were initially shy they soon wizzed off to Jeans room where they proceeded to make braclets and empty out every single toy onto the floor!

They played with the dressing up cloths that Jean never normally touches though they are there in a draw under her bed! And they run about the garden including the prickly jungle which is a new look for the path along the stream where Barbara has planted grass in the fire pit so that it is a little secret den for Jean to play in.

They played on her slide and in the little wendy house and went through the tunnel and put things in the trailor on the trike. The little toddler played with rolly dinosuar and hello puppy and the rocking horse and kept making a bee-line for the water fall!

Eve's mum thought Jean's room was fantastic which cheered me up as I had only had negative responses to it - ie its too full of toys and does it really need to be so sparkly?

They loved the garden and the Mill and chatted with Barbara about things - Muareen and her friend Mary turned up before Barbara did for tea and cakes as Barbara had managed to double book herself for part of today! This cuased a little bit of confussion at first.

The girls pretty much kept themselves entertained and we chatted with the perants - this was lots of fun for us as well and might even result in me and Jean going swimming Friday afternoons!

It was interesting that the girls kept each other entertained making Jean far easier to look after than normal - the only down side is that they decided to run themselves a bath - something neither child would have done on their own but somehow together...

I did have appaplexy just before they came over as I discovered that a cat had weed in the corner under the cabinet and so there was a frantic clearing of books and chunks of amythist and a hasty mopping of the area etc...

I was glad it didn't rain heavily and that they went outside for a lot of the time but here is the twitter poem I wrote just before they arrived:

And so the day begins

the weather looks like - rain, it brings

when out side play

should be the activity of the day

children run about the house

wish they'd be quiet like a mouse

but they will not

And loud shouts abound

that glorious joyous childhood sound

I read it to Jean who then asked, 'is that about me and Eve?'

I said, 'Yes of course it is who else would the poem be about?'

At which point I felt I was in a Winni the Pooh story :/