Sports, research, drama and lots of friends more dear than near!

It’s been another terribly busy week, with CHEF activities (sports on Mon, drama on Wed, P&T [not officially CHEF, but heading that way!] on Thurs), research project (the boys helping out with the development of a video to help autistic children to learn about emotions) on Tuesday, followed by a visit to the Museum of Earth Sciences and meeting up with E, O, M and F (J decided this even took precedence over his beloved French club – I hope you feel duly honoured!) and then on Friday a (fairly – not quite enough advance packing done 😳 ) early start and a drive up to York to stay with Bob’s old room-mate from Uni and his family. Hopefully Bob will blog more about this as I spent much of the time almost catatonic with tiredness – L enlivened this somewhat by being sick in the night for no apparent reason, which then left us wondering what to do about the rest of the weekend, when plans had included going to Sheffield straight after lunch on Sat to spend a little extra time with Barbara and co before going to see the Gruffalo on Sun. In the end we decided to wait until evening to see if anyone else succumbed (fortunately not) and then travelled with children in pyjamas ready for immediate transfer to bed to avoid contamination for as long as possible!
We had a lovely surprise when we discovered that the mysterious “Kate who thinks she used to know you in Methsoc, but doesn’t expect you’ll remember her” turned out to be someone we knew, liked and remembered very well 🙂 and that she was there for dinner and chat on Saturday evening, then stayed up far too late talking – something which seems to happen regularly when we see Barbara! – and got to bed rather later than we should, especially given that the children decided to go in for an amusing array of nocturnal disturbances, from J turning R’s crying into a bad dream which woke him up (so of course he had to wake me up too!) and meant he had to be touching me to get back to sleep (not enough room in the bed, so had to hold his hand as he slept on the floor next to me = good recipe for a dead arm) to K, disturbed by J and we think also seeing Barbara’s shadow as she walked past our door, shuffling his sleeping bag towards the wall (like an enormous cuddly inchworm 😆 ) muttering “I think there are wild animals on the landing!” all the while about 90% asleep and then L, disturbed by all this action and by coughing fits, standing up, tripping over J and throwing herself onto the bed so that she could scrabble up and demand “Mummy milk!” in a hoarse but nonetheless loud voice! Ah, the joys of motherhood – and why on earth did I let Bob sleep near the wall, leaving me next to the children?
Time has caught up with me again, so Bob will have to blog about Sunday!