Sunday 21st April 2013

Good Lord! What a weekend! Alpha Mum and Beta Dad have been in sixth gear whilst towing the kids along for the ride. At one point I though, "oh eck, I've become one of those pushy mums". You know the ones.

They stand at the side of the stage during the 'Britain's Got Talent' auditions whilst their 4 year old is singing Charles Gounod's Ave Maria, proceeded by a dance from musical theatre featuring a copious amount of jazz hands before ending their act with the soliloquy from Juliet's death scene. At the end Simon Cowell says, "I didn't like it...(CROWD BOOS - CHILD CRYING INCONSOLABLY)...I loved it! (CROWD CHEERS, AFORESAID PUSHY MUM RUNS ON THE STAGE AND EMOTIVE MUSIC SUCH AS 'THE FLOOD' BY TAKE THAT IS PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND; CHILD STILL CRYING BUT WITH A WRY SMILE)

Just to rewind back a little, our Friday night started calmly and routinely. By that I mean red wine, a take away and my weekly texts from my friends at Pizza Hut and O2 Priority Moments. When I started to receive these texts I was initially cheesed off with spam infiltrating my messages. However, I then realised that they were two out of possibly four, five at a push, text messages that I receive each week so if they stopped, I'd probably be gutted.

To summarise the weekend as it happened:

Saturday am:

Bethan's Ballet Lesson (a different class where some lovely lady plays the piano)

Saturday pm:

Swimming Lesson 1 - Bethan
Swimming Lesson 2 - James
Children's Birthday Party

Sunday am

Mass and Sunday School

Sunday pm:

Family photo shoot
Gardening
G&T o'clock (well, why should the kids have all the fun?)

It is a sad fact that our children have a better social life than us. Mind you, going to birthday parties for the children is the only time that you can get a group of good friends together to have a catch-up. Ok, so we might be catching-up whilst our third eye is on constant guard for crying or injured children but nevertheless, I think I look forward to these events more than the children as I get to see what has been going on outside of the Hillier bubble.

This is why I've decided to organise a BBQ for 3 weeks time under the guise of celebrating James' 1st Birthday. In all fairness, James could not be bothered if he has a party or not as long as he can chew on someone's foot or shoes (they tell me it's a phase). The planned BBQ is founded on purely selfish reasons; I just want to have another catch-up with friends again. It will be like the old times except that we will be dancing around potties and Little Tikes playing equipment as opposed to our handbags.

The only problems with my cunning plan is: a) I forgot to put the date in the virtual invite I sent out (ok, a text message then) and b) we don't actually have a BBQ because the last one we had was used to help hold up our fence after a big gust of wind knocked it down. That poor thing rusted away against the fence for some time - it ended up looking like some kind of post-modern art work.

I digress. Again.

Whilst it was indeed a very busy and tiring weekend it was fab and full of funny memories! To top it off, the sun shone on the garden whilst I listened to Chaka Khan and watched the kids play with each other in their wee playpen. Bliss...

Sunday 24th March 2013

View from our bedroom window: Palm Sunday 2013

Here is an extract from a poem about the Spring by DH Lawrence:

"This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes..." 
Yeah, thanks for that Mr Lawrence. My daffs haven't even opened yet!

I said to Rob, "Welcome to Spring" He replied, "You're welcome to it".

Later Bethan insisted we play Christmas songs. It was very difficult explaining to her why we don't play Christmas songs when it isn't Christmas but she said in a confused state, "But it's snowing!"

Then we tried to explain about Easter and she looked at us as if we were a radio playing a lot of white noise.