A very busy and eventful few days.

It's been a very busy and eventful weekend.  Friday was M's birthday treat.  She really wanted a sleepover with her friends A & J (sisters), but partly because of the state of our house (building work still on-going although the end is now in sight) and partly because A doesn't feel she's ready for a sleepover at someone else's house yet it wasn't really an option to have it here.  S, A & J's mum, is a *very* good friend and she offered to have it at theirs instead, which solved both problems.  So, after M had been to cricket, K, M & I went round to drop their overnight things off and pick up A & J and I took them all to Pizza Express for tea.

A, K, M & J.

Afterwards, I dropped them back at theirs and went home for my tea, after which A & I went out to the pub for a drink (a very rare occurrence).  They had a great time, although when S dropped them back home about 11.45 the next morning, she told me that she and her husband had been woken up by noise at about 4.30am.  As I understand it, M had woken up and not been able to get back to sleep.  She usually sleeps either with K or with me, but the girls were two to a room and she was in with J and K & A were together.  She would usually snuggle up with whoever she was with and go back to sleep, but J had said that she gets too hot with someone else in bed with her, so M couldn't snuggle with her and she didn't want to risk waking A, so didn't go and get in with K.  Instead, since they'd said it was okay to wake them in the night, she woke up K & J and they started playing (they snuck downstairs to get a game), which woke A up, who joined in.  Eventually they woke the grown ups too, who told them to go back to bed, which they did!

On Saturday, after K's ballet lesson and a quick lunch, the girls and I left A and headed back down to my parents'.  They weren't here, but we'd decided to come for the town street market and the garden party at the semi-sheltered housing complex where my Grandma lives.  A didn't come partly because he was supposed to be playing cricket on the Saturday afternoon (although it was rained off shortly before we left) and partly because the girls and I were staying Sunday night and going straight to a HE group we go to twice a month in Asfordby on the Monday.  We listened to more Lemony Snicket on the way and all was well until about 5 minutes for our destination K said that she wasn't feeling very well.  A little while later she said she felt a bit sick and less than 1 minute from the house, she said she thought she was going to be sick.  When I asked if she could last a minute she said she thought so and we got onto the drive and I pretty much stopped before she found she couldn't quite manage to.  There was a lot of sick.

We were supposed to all be going to join Great Grandma at her garden party, but clearly that couldn't happen, so after some debate, when it was clear that K was feeling much better now and we'd cleaned her up and I'd got the worst out of the car, I took M and left her in the company of several dozen octogenarian-pluses, then dashed back to K.  K was by this time clearly fine, so she had a shower, while I continued cleaning the car and used up all of my Mum's bicarbonate of soda, liberally spreading it over the affected areas to be hoovered out later.

K decided she'd like to come with me to pick up M and we went back to Great Grandma's for a little while, where M told me how all the old people had tried to get her to eat cake, even though she wasn't hungry!  Once back at Granny & Big Grandad's we had some tea, before I read some of the second Ruby Redfort book to them, M & I started a game of chess, but she was too tired to concentrate, so we abandoned it and we all watched Pointless (we like that programme) before the girls went up for an early night (M was, unsurprisingly, asleep considerably earlier than usual!).

Sunday was the street market, which had the 1940s at the theme.  K & M had been keen to dress up, but we had forgotten about this unfortunately.  M was very unhappy about that, so while K was at ballet, she made a gas mask box (covered an old camera box in brown paper and added a strap made of French knitting she'd done ages ago) and dug out the flat cap that A had found in a charity shop to wear when dressing up as James Herriot for my friend's 40th back in February.  She was very unhappy about not really having any suitable clothes to go with them though.  K hadn't made anything, but did have some shorts that would do and a white top with a collar that would work as something a school boy might have worn.  She very kindly let M have both of these though, making one pretty good costume instead of two pretty rubbish ones.

Uncle M popped round before we went out, with Emily, his time-share dog, so we got to see him too, which was nice.  The street market was okay, although lots and lots of tombola stalls and not an awful lot else, but lots of people had made a real effort with dressing up and there were some World War Two re-enactors there, so occasionally you'd see some Military Police arresting a German soldier or someone who'd been dealing on the Black Market.  There was also a fancy dress competition, with 9 & under, 10-15 and 16+ categories.  After some deliberation, M decided to take part and came fourth in the 10 & unders (out of four, but still!) and since there was a money prize for the top three (we only found that out afterwards) it was definitely worth a go!  Someone I used to go to Guides with won first prize for the adults competition and we stopped to say hello to her and various other people, including Great Grandad.

The 10 and unders fancy dress competition

We went to Granny's bowl club too, which was open with a tombola, cake stall and some bowls games. The girls and I all had a go at one of the games, 50p for 4 bowls and you had to try to get them into an area that was marked out with points and get 12 or more points to win a prize. There was an elderly bloke from the club showing you what to do at the time. There were only 3 instead of 4 of the smaller bowls, which, along with the fact that he kept saying 'We won't count that one, try again' rather frequently, confused things somewhat. In the end neither of the girls managed 12 points, but they did do quite well between them, so (quite predictably, since the little boy before us hadn't got enough, despite lots of extra goes, was given a prize anyway) he said to my two that they could chose a bag of sweets (the prize) between them, because they'd both done well. Kate (10.5) had got rather frustrated already with what counted, what he'd said was 'practice' and how many bowls she'd actually had in the end and she stormed off, crying and locked herself in the loo. The problem turned out to be that she hadn't got enough points, so he shouldn't have been giving them a bag of sweets! M (9) agreed with Kate, but instead of having a major paddy/meltdown, accepted the sweets and told me that she planned to share them at the HE group we're going to on Monday.  It took a while, but K calmed down eventually and we went to find something for lunch back on the High Street.  

While eating M decided that she wanted to return to a stall where she had not only spotted, but also had a go on something.  She had some birthday money with her, although she had spent some, so was a little bit short.  Given she had more birthday money at home, I offered to lend her what she needed if she decided to buy it.  She did.

A bugle!

Next we returned to Granny's bowls club for a drink and a sit down and while there we chatted to random people.  One lady, who was also dressed up, spotted M's gas mask box, and said that she'd brought one too, except hers was a real one that had belonged to her sister and she got it out to show us.
 

Trying on the real thing.

After heading back to Granny's, I read the girls some more Ruby Redfort, before having a rest from reading, during which time we found some youtube videos of buglers playing both Reveille (which I learned today is pronounced revalley in English!) and the Last Post, both of which we had talked about with a few different people when M had had a go on the bugle.  This was followed by more Ruby Redfort, tea for the girls (whilst listening to more Lemony Snicket - I don't know how they manage to keep up with and not muddle up the different stories!), more Ruby Redfort, a game of chess for M & me (she won, eventually) and yet more Ruby Redfort before bed.

On Monday after packing up, we popped round to see Great Grandma and for M to play her French horn for her.  We'd been talking about it on Saturday and she'd been very interested, so since M had taken it with her, so she could practise (which she did on Monday morning), she got to see and hear how M is getting on and was very impressed.   

We headed for Asfordby after that, where the girls mostly played outside until the rain started and got really rather heavy along with some rumbles of thunder, when I insisted they come back inside!  Some of the children had decided to put on a bit of an impromptu show and M decided that she wanted to join in, so I went to get her French horn from the car and she played a couple of tunes.  Afterwards we went back for a bit more of a play and a cuppa with E, C, J & L before heading home.  

I had been hoping to come home to a finished or at least nearly finished utility room, unfortunately there seems to have been something of a lack of communication somewhere long the line (about an annoying corner in there), so the fitter had to sort out the corner cupboard to accomodate that.  Ho hum.