Birthday

Happy Birthday to my super-amazing husband, many years young today!

The birthday present that Ben thankfully didn't recall what it was, was a Henry desk hoover. He should count himself lucky really, it could have been much worse - I vetoed a LOT of Ben's earlier choices!

Anyway after a rough start to the day I got the beautiful denby crockery out for breakfast. Highly unusual. Breakfast is my domain, and so we have chintzy china at breakfast. Not today. The denby was Steve's choice all those years ago when we were planning our wedding list - I am slowly becoming more and more subversive, it would seem! Then a slow ramp-up to taking the boys to the supermarket while Steve started on the day's aim: to be able to sit and listen to music in his office/den by evening.

Home for lunch, and then out to the park again after where I'm beginning to think I caught the sun a bit while Ben climbed like a monkey and Charley didn't go to sleep.

Home again via the local shop for barbecuables, as Steve had got the barbecue lit. Charley finally fell asleep as we headed back to the house. Lovely sweaty boy.

Steve had been very busy, and had actually cleared up the office and was building the little side tables that his speakers were going to sit on! All very impressive. But now it was dinnertime and there was food to cook.

Steak, barbecue ribs, sausages. Peppers, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes in the most delicious homemade garlic balsamic marinade. One pint of Guinness, one pint of Guinness and black. It was like being 21 and freshly married again, drinking Guinness and barbecueing for Steve's birthday. Except there were two crazy children around - Charley was investigating everything and getting covered in soot from the old barbecue, and Ben was running around like a crazy fool and managed to knock the scab off his knee when he tripped over the doorframe. That hurt. He cried lots. A new plaster, some big cuddles, lots and lots of limping later, and we sat down at last. Ben had sausages, and Charley had most of the cherry tomatoes and most of a sausage. Most of the cherry tomatoes ended up on his teeshirt but he loved them and kept asking for more!! We finished with toasted marshmallows for me and Steve, and non-toasted marshmallows for the boys. Charley enjoyed his bits of marshmallow. Ben loves them too. It was a lovely end.

But oh my word how mucky were those children so despite it being really really late I ran a bath for Ben, and turned the shower on for me and Charley so he could wander around in the bathroom saying hello to Ben and coming over to his washing up bowl under the shower to splash. He enjoys bath/shower time! I put them to bed on the sofas downstairs once we were all dry and ready for bed. They were both asleep in minutes, happily curled up (Ben) or stretched out (Charley), so that Steve and I could put the new mattress pad on our bed. And then, because the office/den was ready for sitting in, we didn't have to disturb the boys before we could sit down on a sofa and listen to music and eat cake :)

Fabulous :)