A lovely home-made birthday!

It was my birthday at the weekend and it was a completely lovely one.  I'd had a pretty relaxing time the day before, as I'd been banished from the kitchen by M and since K was busy finishing quilling my birthday present I was rather redundant!  I spent several hours reading a fascinating book, about John Snow who discovered who cholera was spread in London in the 19th century, that I'd picked fairly randomly off the shelf at the library a while ago.

I was awoken at a very civilised time by a procession entering the bedroom, with breakfast on a tray, a pile of cards and presents and M playing Happy Birthday on the French horn.  I had some lovely presents, including Fluxx (which I'd requested when my brother asked if there was anything I wanted, having played it at friends' over the holidays, but more on that in another post soon) and some lovely home-made things from my girls.

A tapestry from M saying that I'm 'the best Mummy in the word' [sic]

Teeny tiny quilled boxes from K...

...along with a lovely quilled pendant.

When I came downstairs, I finally got to see what it was M had been planning for a couple of weeks.  She had conceived the idea, researched in recipe books and online, gone out shopping and bought ingredients that we didn't have and shut herself away in the kitchen for over 6 hours to carry out her plan with no help at all.

It is a double-decker bus, complete with boiled sweet windows and the number thirty-eleven (both girls still refuse to countenance me leaving my thirties, part of their reluctance to accept change), which you may be able to work out is written 3 and then two small 1s one above the other.

M and I, and sometimes K too, spent quite a lot of time playing various games (I'm going to do a separate post about our new board & card games shortly) before the two of them went to their friend L's birthday party.  Since it was the other side of town (sort of), A and I took advantage of a couple of hours to ourselves, to have a bit of a mooch around the shops over there, treat ourselves to a cuppa and cake in a cafe and then I had a massage, while A read his book, before picking the girls back up.  We came home, where A cooked tea for the two of us, the girls having eaten at the party, before playing more games until it was bedtime for the girls.  All in all a really rather marvellous birthday!