friends

here is andy. he’s 40 on friday which makes him quite old.
here is providing us with forty winks.

his party featured twin record players (probably not fair to call them ‘decks’, though we did sit on deck chairs). various people dj’d which involved putting records on the record deck.
at one point White Lines (grandmaster flash) was playing at the same time as Jive Talkin’ (BeeGees)because someone left both faders up and walked away, and surprisingly it worked nicely.

later andy decided to play us some old cine film from when he was a wee baby.
it took a bit of time to set up

but soon we were running

and projecting on to the house wall

and then even andy could sit down in the dark and enjoy the rythmic clicking of the projector whilst watching his life flash before his eyes

tony agreed to be the official archivist for esther’s birthday. about half way through the party he disappeared. i found him asleep on the sofa.
i bet spielberg never has that trouble.

here are andy and andy. andy is the one on the right.
both andies are funkypancake readers. andy reads it because i set it as his default homepage on his browser last week and now gets a daily dose.
andy, meanwhile, has been a reader for a while.
here they are with a bin bag to clear up party tea rubbish.

it was our local preschool’s 40th aniversary yesterday and they had a big party where there was much fun to be had.
kezia and a decorated biscuit:

Lynn knows her onions:

kezia hooking a duck:

cake:

bouncing:

jane’s been taking pictures of people we know in a fancy wig and sun glasses for a guess-who photo quiz. it proved very tricky despite most of the subjects being familiar to us.
i may post a few of the pictures as some of them are quite amusing.
here’s matthew who is holding his wiggy photo. doesn’t he look pleased (in both pictures) ?

[worth clicking if you want to see the smaller picture bigger]

here are two people who you’ll know but won’t. thanks to the power of the internet you’ll have read Alan (on the left) and Rascle’s comments (on the right) on funkypancake.
Alan is the nature expert and Rascle excells in the bad pun. Both excellent chaps.
well done. hoorah.

here is dougie. he came to visit for a few hours yesterday whilst his parents went off and had a posh time.
he’s a very jolly sweet little chap as you can tell from this photo !

our friend hannah has been adventuring and brought back these photos.
here’s some great before and after signage of road kill (amended by the locals it seems):

here is a box on a stick marked vinegar:

and here is a drive thru bottle shop:

we went to center parcs yesterday to visit some friends who were staying there. jane stayed at home to mark exam papers.
it’s quite a long way to drive and we nearly spent as much time travelling as we did having fun when we got there.
still, nothing would stop anna and kezia fearlessly running round on tree-top climbing things.

the girls and i went with andy, adam and luke to poleseden lacy for bank holiday fun.
as it traditional, it rained, but we were lucky with the weather as it also didn’t rain.
here is an attempt to get luke, kezia, adam and esther in the same picture (note luke running off in the distance)

here is adam videoing esther on a maze

and here is esther on a ropey maze tangly thing

and here we are picnicking in what we thought was a little barn suitable for picknicking in (but was actually a nature hide).

on the way round we also bumped in to kezia and esther’s best friends who were also visiting on the same day !

katie, kezia and esther put on a puppet show on a table. nothing much was happening from an audience point of view so i took this photo under the table.
we’ve reached the age of performances, but not quite reached the age of quality control

katie and esther

click for big

paul and liz and wee dougie came round for lunch today. whilst visiting dougie did his first solo walking steps and learnt to wave.
i’m thinking of starting a hot-housing school for parents who want to fast-track their kids.
of course he might just have been very keen to leave our house and so was running for the door whilst waving goodbye ?

here is liz reading ‘the hungry caterpillar’ to anna and kezia (who look slightly worried)

here are esther and kezia playing ludo with their god mother ruth after a fantastic lunch. esther and kezia are wearing their ponchos.
unfortunately kezia has now stopped calling her’s her ‘puncture’. instead it’s now her ‘puntcho’.

esther’s best friend catherine had an ice skating party which was a great thing to have.
we all had great fun and esther and catherine even managed to skate on their own !