Project 366 Week Sixteen

I always knew that once people started talking about drought restrictions, we would be in for a spell of rain, so I’m not complaining. Rather I am trying not to. What you really don’t need for the last week of the Easter holidays is the kind of rain that keeps you indoors. Fortunately for us, the rain held off long enough on Sunday that we could visit our Cherry Tree and enjoy a delicious Hog Roast. Part of our Rent-a-Cherry-Tree package is a Blossom Walk: last year it was so hot that the clotted cream was melting into your scone. This year it was freezing onto it.

My poor husband returned to work on Monday after nearly two weeks off, leaving us girls to our own devices. We survived fairly well, remembering to collect the Wonder Hound from her kennels ‘holiday’ and resuming our weekly Granny-fest. The Girls were delighted with their gifts from America and I got to look at photos of her time with her other grand-daughter. Likewise we got back to our Tuesday morning routine of going to cooking. This time LBG got to come and bake then bounce: we stayed on with the group after class so that all the children could enjoy the soft play centre. From there I drove to Lewisham- a journey made painfully slow by the rain- so that we could spend the afternoon with other friends and cuddle a baby. It was a long day, but a good one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

All week, LBG has been operating on holiday hours- staying up a bit later and sleeping on in the morning after Dimples has woken. I left her in bed with Daddy to drop an unhappy Dimples at ‘school’ on Wednesday- more evidence of the reintroduction of term-time routine. LBG opted to stay home with Daddy, who was working, whilst I ran errands. It’s a bit odd buying water butts when it’s pouring with rain. That thought vanished when I returned home to find a pair of scissors and a pile of hair on the sitting room floor. A tense ten minutes later and DH and I thankfully established that Barbie had suffered a radical haircut rather than LBG. An afternoon spent with stickers paid dividends as the rain continued unabated.

Thursday followed a very similar pattern: school run with Dimples, morning trip out with LBG- doing the teas at playgroup- followed by an afternoon of Barbie and crafting whilst supper simmered away in the slow cooker. Dimples came home from nursery spoiling for a fight so the house looked like we’d been burgled fairly quickly. In between scaling the kiddie-kitchen and  lobbing the crayons around she kept declaring “I berry tired. I need to go to sleep.” So I took the hint and tucked her up.

By Friday I was low on energy and looking forward to sharing the parenting burden. But with the sun shining at last, The Girls and I pottered round the house and garden whilst the decorator put the wallpaper up in the Man Cave. When the rain moved in, the thunder boomed and the Wonder Hound went bonkers. Still, the rain had managed to fill our brand new water butts in the three days since I bought themThe middle-of-the-night antics with Dimples throughout the week caught up with me, as I went down with some bug or other and spent the night curled up under blankets on the sofa watching Those Who Kill, another fabulous Danish crime series.

And then it was Saturday, a Red Letter Day for us, as we got to meet Baby Lauren, about whom The Girls had been obsessing since her birth over Christmas. As her parents, good friends of ours, have chosen to live in The North of England, it has taken until now for us to meet her, on the Southern leg of her UK tour! There were cuddles and giggles and presents, and tears when they left. But DH took us all out for supper, after a nap and some hockey in the garden.