A birthday party

On Sunday my grandson, B, had his 9th birthday party that he was sharing with his friend, J. As it was not until mid afternoon I had been invited to a lovely Sunday lunch of roast pork at my son's house beforehand. How do they get the crackling so wonderfully crisp? It was delicious and I did the washing up afterwards while preparations were made for the party.

There is a climbing wall where my son works and the children assembled ready to start climbing. Well I say assembled, but they spent most of their time shouting at each other and racing round and round, and that included the girls as well! Seven boys and three tomboy girls was quite a handful!!

Anyway, to get rid of some surplus energy and warm up, they had to boulder round the base of the climbing walls and played a game called 'Shark Attack'. Lots of shouting and leaping onto the wall.

Bouldering

Overhangs in the corner

 Then the really fun part started, we all (children and adults) had to put on harnesses and the children were knotted onto the ropes while the adults had to act as belays, with me as one of them. The children were all very good at climbing, with some climbing the overhangs that you can see in the corner of the bottom picture. Hard work belaying as the children were gong up so fast that we couldn't keep up!!

Then back to the house for pizza and birthday cake while the adults stood and chatted in the kitchen, eating chicken drumsticks. Yum. I was exhausted when I got home and needed to lie down in a darkened room with something pleasant to drink!!!

Anyway you may remember that I had been looking after Ellie every Tuesday: well this stopped at Christmas as she is now at school. But as one door closes another opens and I am now going to be looking after my great nephew, baby Will instead. He is only 11 months but his Mum starts work next week and she wants him to have some time at home and not be in the nursery all week. Today I went to Bedford to get to know him better and we went for a lovely long walk down by the river and looked at all the ducks and of course went to the park for a swing.

A very quiet playground and little Will having a gentle swing

A brilliant playground and I can't wait for him to walk so we can go on the lovely baby walkway and slide that you can see in the photo.

There were lots of squirrels and I practised using my zoom lens on the new camera -

I am pleased with this one as he was a long way away.

By the way friends said they couldn't 'comment' on my blog very well and they told me what techy stuff to do and I hope that it makes it easier. I haven't really got a clue what they were talking about but I usually do as I am told - well usually. Do comment - you can do so anonymously if you want.

I am hoping that my next blog will be 'crafty' stuff as I have embroidery class tomorrow and I have done some homework, with smocking class on Friday - again homework has been done, so I will have something to show. Oh and I have nearly finished my postcard that we started at Higham Piecemakers. So much to show you later in the week and finally over the weekend I am having a taster session learning to play the ukulele.