I decided to have a birthday party in london a week early as my birthday coincides with the start of mums treatment. Here are the photos of the event - also apologies to non face book people who I had initial forgotten to invite as I'm stupid!
Of course there was food.
And the inflatibles had to come out didnt they 🙂
A party full of geeks in an office full of electrical and pooter bits is a dangerous dangerous thing.
Tish turned up looking very much like he has just stepped off of the set of friends - I think he really looks like Ross in this picture - yes i can be mean sometimes.
Still he arrived with 'Uncle' Ben (the guy who cuaght my bouquay at the wedding) who he had randomly bumped into in the supermarket on route 🙂 this was a great suprise for me 🙂
My Brother found the romote control darleck and there was no stopping him I'm afraid but then he is forgiven as he turned up with a rainbow coloured coat with fleece lining. Charlee has the exact same one and her work colleges have pationed to prevent her wearing it to work as its too distracting apparently!
rudolf was still around but a bit legless after the holiday (in that he'd started to deflate!) I got an action shot of him here moving in on Robs food!
Clare turned up with curly hair so I had to take a photo - the party had been going for about ten hours by this point :/
At some point we decided to go next door and watch room 1408 which was fun as it lead us to telling ghost stories until about 3:30 in the morning - the party had started at 11 am - it was fun but as with all things there is a price and in this case it was three sides of washing up without a sishwasher followed by packing up, followed by the trip to Essex to get Jean from the dotting grandperants and then the trip home - with side tour to Heathrow Airport.
Thanks everyone who came 🙂
Jean loved Christmas it was full of wonderous new things - here are pictures of her during the holidays or just after playing with presants - this first one shows that money can't buy happiness as Jean played for hours with a server box that was at the office - she really liked the bit of cardboard that went in the top with foamy bits to protect the server - she thought this was the best thing ever!
The day we were first in Highgate Jean helped me decorate the office - this mainly involved her running around with the tinsel - we made up several games from doing swerly dances with it as if the tinsel were chinese ribbons to making a regal wrap out of it and pretending to be royality, to making a volcano out of it, or simple running her fingers over it saying - Pretty Mummy Pretty!
We have an inflatible reindeer which Jean had the previous Christmass fed with special oats and glitter - here are the photos of this years interactions with it - at first she was a bit scared of it but soon got to the point of trying to jump on the poor things back - something Alaric had to help her with.
Jean adores hats and as a result stole and put on just about any hat she could get hold off - Clare guard your trillbee! She has also taken to calling my Dad Hat Man which is what Alaric calls him as he is always wearing a hat of some kind! She still calls him ferfer too though.
The obsession with planes continues and she now has a giant play mobile plane complete with toliet!
Jean unlike most people likes my christmas clock - Tick toc rouw rouw! Snowman! - and even dances to the five minutes of christmas carols it plays every hour on the hour. She did this with much exclaimations of Pretty Lights Mummy!
Our main presant to her this year was a brightly coloured trike that one of the ladys from my writing class gave me - she loves it though we have had a few issues with her knocking the thing over trying to get on or off of it and traping herself under it as a result! She is also still too little to peddle it her self really. Still she likes putting sticks in its trailer which has made Barbara very happy indeed.
One of Jeans presants was a pink hearts cream tea set which she has proceeded to make people have cups of tea from - her teddy's are the main suffers of this new obsession though I have to confess the 'table cloth' was my idea and is in fact her blanket straight from her cot!
Would anyone listern? No. So as a result the van is well and truelly stuck along the side of the drive.
It all started with the fact that we have been flooded so flood precuations are taking place in the normal parking area so we had parked in front of the greenhouse but then Barbara was having a tea party and her guestys needed to park so the van had to go otherwise the guests would have to park on the grass which obviously wasn't on so the van had to park on the grass. I said it wouold get stuck and was assured that parking along the gradient would mean it wouldn't get stuck.
We got stuck.
We where therefore late for cubs becuase even though we had left extra time for towing out etc... the towing rope snaped and after a bit of a hoohar we transfered our stuff to Barbaras car and headed off. All was then fine until my scouts arrived - we were supposed to go to the village pound to float new year lanterns but alas I had left the reflective jackets in the van along with torches etc... on top of that lots of the kids failed to turn up in outdoor clothing and I was already concerned about the fact it had rained so much - I was waiting for Al to finish cubs properlly in order to send him out on a recky of the area when one of the perants told me it was so bad down there that she wouldnt be happy for her kid to go - it was at this point I realised I'd left the jackets and that behind anyway.
I was very annoyed with myself but I think the lanterns still worked well inside in bowls of water - fortunatly I'd planned for incase we had bad weather.
Still the van is stuck and we are now hoping that the builders are going to help us get it unstuck - SIGH. Still it turns out we have a Roman Urinal 🙂 but more on that later!
The Saturday before Christmas saw me and Al setting out on a fouly foggy night with tendrils of fog rising up like a living creature to ensnear the unweary traverler - mid winter suddenly seemed a very stupid time to be out and about. We where heading to Somerset to visit some fellow geologists laddened with engagement gifts, birthday gifts and Christmas parafanalia not too mention a little something for the house warming 🙂 The fog seemed to be exhuding a foul greasy dirt that was ssticking to the windscreen - we thought that our wind screen wippers had suddenly perished - but no they where fine - was it the road grit/salt as one astrophysicist suggested (namely olly) or some dark influence from beyound - like oil wells being burnt or volcanic eruptions ect...
Still it was a fun party though for some reason I appear to have only taken about two pictures :/
Sunday was the day of our departure from Highgate back to the rural sticks of Gloucestershire and what happens? Al becomes ill - he is headachy and cant think that straight and felt a bit feverish. A few paracetamol sorted most of it out so that about 5 hours late we could actually set out for our trip to Essex to pick up the Jeany who had been visiting mum and dad as this week mum starts her radiotherapy so Jean has spent most of christmas etc... with them.
Once Jean was picked up we headed out onto the road once more and all was going well until....
We discovered M25 south to M4 west interchange was closed - arg! Never fear we thought there'll be some sort of way to loop back on ourselves so that we could go via Reading instead of Oxford or there'll be diversion signs and we'll be fine.... hahahahahahaha. Well there where diversion signs and they took us to a round about where it was obvious that we had to go round and double back on ourselves - easy right? Well it would have been except that it was one of those major ones that has lanes that spiral outwards and you have to pick the correct lane for your destination - except there is no such lane for doubling back on yourself so that we where having to guess and suddenly we where one lane too far over and before we could correct it a barrier divided us off and we had no choice other than to follow the route - to Heathrow Airport :/
We thought there must be some round abouts where we can turn around surely? Right? There's always round abouts - this is England.... no round abouts - we thought we'd found one with lots of glittering lights on short polls around it but no this turned out not to be a round about and took us into a one way system which lead us to a carpart - with barriers that had a minimium charge of £2.30 for half an hour. No way to reverse, no where to turn around - nothing so we paid our £2.30 and left.
This then took a turn towards the strange (especially as the previous night we had watched a Stephen King film) we where directed into a tunnel that looked like was too small for cars and was father long and square in cross section with a green circle lane right down the middle of it and signs sayng the cyclists had priority. Once in this system we had no coice of where to go so we entered this tunnel in the van and too our relief exited without any creepy horror movie antiiques!
We then resumed our journy on wards towards Gloucestershire only now Al was starting to feel sick again - combine this with our windscreen washer deciding to die and random greasy dirt appearing on the windscreen and we where stopping more than we normally would 🙁
We got home about 3 ish and pretty much fell into bed. I awoke in time for us to get Jean to nursery and for me to go to Cheltenham to do the mirade of things that needed to be done today but... it never happened becuase it turned out that I had slept through Al being sick and he was doubled uo with stomache cramps and weak and pasty looking. Not good. After some thought over why he was sick and I wasnt seeing as I am the one who gets sick not him we worked out that he had typed out the contence of the left over non-alchoholic mulled wine I had made on saturday. He had drunk a mug of the stuff with the dregs of the spices and CLOVES that I had used - and becuase time was short he'd downed the stuff including the sluge that contianed all the CLOVES I had put a brew for about 15 people :/
Can anyone else see where this is going?
Yes - I have managed to poison my husband with CLOVES - he says its not my fualt but mew :'( It took until about 4 this afternoon before he could contemplate eating anything at all and he still hurts. Of course this has put us realy teally behind for the week and doesn't feel like a particually good start to the new year :/
Sarah | sarah | 
Fri 11th Jan 2008 11:51 am | 
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