Gluttony

We are sitting here making ourselves feel sick eating too many Elizabeth Shaw mint crisp chocolates and drinking far too much wine. Disgraceful really, especially as we went out for a meal last night and ate and drank far too much. We have discovered the most amazingly good restaurant in a village about 20 mins from here. You have to be prepared to remortgage your house to eat there, but it is fandango-tastic. Ben said (in all seriousness) "This is the place we have been searching for all these years". You had to be there I guess, but it was very very funny. Meanwhile, the poor children are eating very badly, poor KP has refused all food except a bowl of peas today, and T has been chain-eating Percy Pigs all day.
Over to Ben
Elaine has eaten far more of the chocolates than me, and has made up a new word- a mix of a word from Bohemian Rhapsody and a real word!!
The meal was actually my treat- everyone should have a husband like me!!

A whole year has passed

Thanks to all who sent kind wishes/gifts for KP's birthday. As is usual when you host parties, we realised we didn't really take many pictures. We all had a lovely time on Saturday, it was great to get everyone together.


KP is delighted with her new doll, and all other dolls are thrown angrily to the floor if they dare to attempt to get a cuddle. T has spent the weekend taking care of Jessie's doll, which was left behind here, and Jessie left very careful instructions over the telephone that T had to take care of it.

We picked up a mega bargain at the market yesterday - I'm sure Ben will dine off the tale for while yet. He did try to tell me that mega bargains in large boxes from markets often have missing bits. Anyway, we haggled hard, bought it, got it out of the car at home, and a large yellow sticker fell off which said 'Argos returns, missing parts'. It is a 'Mamas and Papas childs pram set and luckily there were four wheels and indeed all the parts, the only thing missing was the dreadful changing station which we are actually relieved about. So it was actually a mega bargain in the end. Apparently if I say that one more time I will be in big trouble. The whole episode brought back memories of kites from China...

Today we spent KP's birthday with grandma and grandad at the gym, then the restaurant at the Garden Centre, and then riding bikes to the park. Oh yes, and still eating huge amounts of left-over cake...

Poo

Home Alone

I have clearly got something wrong here.... Elaine is out with some friends, enjoying Pizza- I am at home- no beer, no wine and no snacks, and unable to get out to the shop as I am babysitting.

On the bright side, I have been off work all week and have been to the following things which I often heard about, but could never go to:

• Toddler gym


• Pre- school (I was a daddy helper)


• Primate music class

During the week we have also played football, been to a museum (not to be repeated for a few years as Tim was not particularly interested,) been to the 'Living Rainforest,' been to the garden centre and spent a long time playing with CD's- a current favourite pastime of Tim's. We have also made a replica coffee maker from the Brabantia bin box, and a sword (Tim had to go dressed as a Prince to his music class)

At the rainforest, we saw some interesting plants- this is an Arabica coffee plant- useful in the production of espresso!

This is an Avocado plant- the fruit of which are eaten in large quantities by recent retirees

We also saw a bird eating spider.

And an imperial scorpion.

These are actually edible- as are all scorpions, you just need to cut off the sting- and the venom sack (that ball at the end of the tail) and then munch away- a good source of protein. I would rather have a steak I think.

Le weekend

We have had a much slower pace of weekend this week thank goodness, which has allowed us some time to get into series 1 of 'Prison Break'. Roy and Sian have lent it to us, and said it was equally as good as '24' which we all absolutely loved. They are right, and we spent 3 hours watching on Friday, 3 hours on Sat and are just about to get started on Sunday's marathon viewing session. Ben is supposed to be going to buy chocolate for the occasion, but he is still here as I write this...

We visited P, A, J and T for tea yesterday. It was lovely to catch up and we loved their new pad!. T and J get on like a house on fire and they had a great time together. T of course was thrilled with J's music player and cd collection.

Today we all went to church, and then out to play football. We took a giant chocolate chip cookie, and whoever scored a goal got to have a bite of it. It's the only way we can get T to be remotely interested, but he did score a lot of goals today.

Oh dear, I've turned the italics on. Not sure how to get them off, so its probably time to go and watch Prison Break. Where's the chocolate Ben?