David Currie

1034It was Emma’s fifth birthday last weekend. In a compromise between quiet affair at home and all expensive paid trip out, we booked a local hall and invited all of the girls in Emma’s class, a few of the boys and a few random others. The party wasn’t until the afternoon though and fortunately Grandad and Granny Sue were around to take Emma and Duncan off to the SOC orienteering in Valley Park to contain the excitement whilst the preparations continued. (I escaped from my duties just in time to pedal over and have a run round myself. Despite having drawn the map I still took a few wrong turns but managed to head up the results.)

We had half an hour to get set up in the hall before the 16 guests arrived. They were being treated to various craft activities on the “Under the sea” theme, party games and then party tea. It all seemed to go along fairly smoothly although I’ll confess to hiding in the kitchen for much of the time! Mr Bump (our cold compress that Christine happened to put in) got rather a lot of use but there is a suspicion that this may have been related to the sweet that accompanied each incident.

When the two hours were over and the parents returned to claim their children, there was a big sigh of relief as we put the hall back in order. Emma settled to open up the large pile of presents which resulted from having so many guests, all of which were well received. In anticipation of this, we hadn’t bought her much in the way of toys but the books, clothes and swimming related items (Emma finally got promoted to the next swim class and an orange swim hat on Sunday) also went down well. The biggest present would be the new (second hand) bike from Granny Sue and Grandad. That will
take a bit of getting used to as there are no stabilisers.

There are few photos of the day in this Flickr collection. Having failed to collect consent forms from all of the parents, those with friends/family links on Flickr will be the only ones to see those from the party!

1031I’m hoping to use the double Bank Holiday weekend to post a few belated blog entries starting with two weekends back. On a run, someone had mentioned that there was an open day at Sparsholt College on the Saturday and, as the proceeding week’s rain had finally come to an end, we decided to head along and take a look. As we turned in to a huge parking field packed with cars I realised I had understimated the scale of the event. I had also underestimated the size of the campus and, even with tractor trailer rides a plenty, there was still a lot of ground to cover in the couple of hours that we had left before closing.

We managed to take in the farm, equine centre, plant sale, Gardeners’ Question Time garden (Duncan provided them with some water!), inflatables, birds of prey, assorted farm machines and tropical fish but there was still lots more to see and if we go again we’d definitely make a day of it. Needless to say, when asked for her favourite bit, Emma replied with “the ice cream”!

1025I had a phone call at work earlier this week to tell me that Emma had lost a tooth. She’s been saying it was wobbly for a while so it was no great surprise. Unfortunately, there is no sign of the tooth and the suspicion is that it was swallowed along with the apple she was eating at the time. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to want to retrieve it and the tooth fairly settled for a note explaining the situation! I can’t begrudge her £1: she’s spent some of it on stickers for my birthday.

In other news, Duncan is potty training again this weekend with about a 50% hit rate. Further evidence of the children ageing: I’ve finally got round to removing the remaining stair gate (children swinging on it being more of a danger than falling down the stairs) and most of the cupboard locks in the kitchen (so hopefully they’ll stay on their hinges a bit better).

1016Christine worked the last couple of days so I had time off to look after the children. Well, on Thursday, I actually only looked after one of them as Emma and I dropped off Duncan at nursery before spending most of the day at Manor Farm Country Park. Much to my surprise, Emma even enjoyed the 40 minute Victorian school lesson on offer although she only put her hand up once (to spell dog!). We stopped off at the library on the way home. Having spent most of the stay colouring, her contribution to the book selection was a cartoon book of Shakespeare’s plays: Midsummer Night’s Dream is the only one which doesn’t involve at least one murder! Yesterday, Duncan, Emma and I eventually made it out the house and went to Hilliers where the children ran themselves in the ground. We managed, for example, to spend half an hour playing manically on a wobbly bridge that is all of three metres long. They also spent ages jumping around a circle of log stumps. Duncan just leapt from one towards the next regardless of whether he was likely to make it! I’m looking forward to having a rest at work next week…

1013Having had a trial run in Monmouth with friends, when we arrived home on Easter Sunday the children were in no doubt that they wanted a treasure hunt in order to find the Easter eggs provided by Grandma. Christine therefore whipped up a quick set of clues: written for Emma and pictorial for Duncan, and distributed them around the garden. It didn’t take long for them to follow the trail and even less time to start to demolish their prize!