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Thirteen. Unlucky for some, but evidently not for us. Why? That’s the amount of people we spent time with at the weekend. We had a very sociable weekend. Mum and Bart dropped in for a roast chicken lunch on Saturday on the way back from Gatwick (but ultimately Majorca), but unknown to them, Ean and Vicki opened our front door and gave them the homecoming surprise of their lives.

We’d arranged it during the week, and it worked faultlessly. After a pre-dinner drink and homegrown strawberries on the pub table in the garden, we went in for lunch, re-convening outside after mum had blown the candles out on her belated spiced apple cake. We followed that with coffee, and then as prior engagements called, we waved them all off back to Lowestoft.

It has sometimes felt like a Herculean task getting all of my side of the family down to Chelmsford together, but Saturday was lovely, and hopefully a sign of things to come. Even though we had a two-hour window, as we’d done most of the prep beforehand, it didn’t feel a rushed 120 minutes, and even the chickens got new people cuddles.

Not long after our guests had started their journey home, we went out ourselves, to Galleywood and Nik’s family, where the roles were reversed; we were now the ‘guests’ and ate as much food and drunk as much drink as we liked, all under the sun on loungers in the garden. Kim, Mike, James, Ellis were down from Bedfordshire, and Sal, Dan, and Will had come up from Kent.

There was much chatting from the adults, while the kids (and Andrew) teared around the lawn, kicking and throwing balls, the horses peering over the fence now and then, hoping to get a carrot or two. The weather was better than anyone had dared hope, and we were still sitting outside eating dessert at a quarter to nine. It was only to feed Oscar that we had to go (he was already over his meal time), but the day proved one thing; not having anything planned for the rest of the afternoon and not having to shoot off really let us feel relaxed, and made the time we spent with our folks even more enjoyable.

Tags: Journal

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.