BASKETTCASE

We celebrated little Joe's 5th birthday last Tuesday, and on Saturday he invited 8 little friends to his party at Planet Zoom.  If you can stand two hours of ear-splitting noise it is an easy way to throw a child's party.  It was an interesting experience for us as well, as most of the Mum's stayed and joined us for a cup of tea and to observe the tea in an upstairs room.  I had visualised a traditional tea-party with sandwiches, sausage rolls, jelly and then cake, but in fact on arrival each child was given the choice of three hot  meals: chicken nuggets, sausage, both with chips, or pasta with some sort of tomato sauce.Mary-Ann had to provide the cake, which was brought in with the candles lit for Joe to blow out.  Then they all had ice-cream, a photo on the balcony, and a party-bag which included a piece of cake.  Joe was very happy with it all, and we got to know some of the children whose names have cropped up regularly, and to take to their Mum's.

Joe and Sally arrived in time for the party, but there were more than enough of us to supervise the play part, so they walked George and returned in time for Sally to entertain the children while they ate their tea, just by talking to them.  She is so gifted at communicating with little children.  Our two adore her, and I suspect several of the children at the party would have like to take her home with them.

Sunday was Father's Day, and we stayed home from church to be with Joe and Sal and to cook lunch, which was wonderful.  Mary-Ann made the morning tea for Butler Dave, whose job it is normally.

I have an appointment to see my surgeon (I belong to one at last!) on the 29th.  I have not had any results, and don't want to attempt to get a preview from my GP because the important thing is going to be what needs to be done, rather than what has been found.  So I am just enjoying being able to get out in the garden, and taking Joe to school, and James to town on Grandma Days.

We have re-organised the messy back porch, put oiled wood worktop round the butler sink and facing the outside door, and shelved to the ceiling on that wall to give lots more storage.  Bob and Sheila had done something similar with their boiler room and it was so impressive that it motivated us to get on with ours.  Now we need to get some shelving up in the kitchen to relieve the worktops of all the drink-making stuff - tea, coffee, camomile, chocolate, Splenda, sugar, Lady Grey, Chai, ground coffee (at least three sorts!)  At present we have a lot of duplicates, having unpacked more of the Knee's boxes, so our workspace is extremely cluttered.