Phase 3

We went round to my parents at about 10am ish, laden with lemon meringue pie (thanks waitrose) the ingredients of a banoffee pie, a nut loaf that Sis in law Gill could eat, bottles of wine and fizzy pop.. and a spare bag for any goodies!! (read presents!) Oh also took the bbq ribs D made :-)

My mum, bless her had created a board of photos (featuring me) from age dot upwards :-) she had hung up two of my dresses from when I was about 10 months old.. and my very first pair of shoes!! Apart from the colour (pink) they look just like the shoes I wear now :-) My mum also made me a really lovely birthday cake from choc brownie mix with little nuts in..yummmm!

My older brother John, his wife Gill and their two kids were already there. We got busy - I made the banoffee pie, Douglas got busy with the spare ribs.

When Thomas (little brother) and his wife Katy and 3 kids arrived, things got a bit hectic, as it would with 5 kids making kids noises and having fun :D

My dad made pizzas for everyone, but got a bit flustered and gave John a meat pizza, which he being veggie for even longer than I, did not go down well :( Despite this, food was good, and everyone got fed something they liked :-)

Some of my friends showed up yay! My friend Travelling John from my folk dancing days and his girl/friend Carol... then my dear friend Shelly from north Notts, and her friend Stewart who ive met a couple of times. They fed, and then I got to open the lots of lovely cards and pressies from people!!!

My biggest and most amazing pressie was a sat nav!! this was from Thos, Kt and my parents. I also got the promise of a fruit tree (of our choice) from my brother John and his wife Gill! We have decided to get a Bramley Apple tree for the middle of our lawn :-)

I got a box of choccies.. a wine stopper with a 40 on.. a lovely 40 mug, a tile with some tea lights in.. a ceramic hot plate holder with a lovely picture on.. oh and other lovely things I cant remember cause its late :-)

It must have been about 5.30pm when Shelly, Stewart, then John and Carol left.. we packed up having said our goodbyes soon after and wended our merry way home too :-)

It was a lovely gathering.. just the right number of people for the space and my mum, whose blood pressure normally rises way above its normal limit at parties.. managed very well :-)

Ive spent quite a while putting friends and family addresses into my lovely new toy.. now time for bed.. after all a 39 year old needs her sleep, my last day of my 30 somethings.. tomrorow I shall become naughty 40!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Housework

Happy to say D is fine, me too..

He is being a star with the housework and cooking etc whilst recouperating. He has started some gout medication but gout might get worse before it gets better (odd)

My Uncles 80th today, so D has made a wonderful cake in the shape of a car, following a Delia Smith recipie for the cake (will find it!) I made some little registration plates for it with his initials and 80 on. I typed the initials and 80 into a word document, increased the font size and printed them out.

Later, at work I used a bright yellow highlighter to make the "registration plates" yellow, before cutting them out and sticking them some some thin card (this was from a chocolate bar wrapper!) They look pretty good!

When I got home (having got rather naughty fish & chips for Douglas, chips and curry sauce for me) i used a little spare icing to attach the registration plates to their chocolate butter icing covered car. If you look carefully, you will see lights and windscreen wipers, all made from Jelly beans! Fun!!






Robert was dead impressed with his cake, and said it was the best cake he had ever had. :-)