A blast from the past...

I couldn't post about this last week as it was all to be kept hush hush. But whilst Mum, Jenny and Hannah were here last week I answered Jenny's phone. Jenny was painting our office with Steve and I was in the kitchen with Mum when her phone rang. "Hello, this is Hazel on Jenny's phone I said". "Hazel?" the male voice replied. "Are you with your family at the moment?" I was. "I want you to quietly and calmly stand up and leave the room". What??? My mind was racing. I thought it was someone with bad news! Jenny and Mum thought it was very odd that I looked so horrified and left the room with Jenny's phone. I went into Jude's bedroom. "Hazel, I don't know if you remember me. It's Steve St Paul." Well, of course I remembered him! He was in our small fellowship when I was a child, in Maidstone, England. He is from New Zealand and he lived in Maidstone with some other New Zealanders for many years. Wow, it was so strange to suddenly be speaking to him on the phone. The last time I saw him I was about 14 or so. I guess that's when he moved back to NZ. Well, he was over here touring around Ireland with his Mum, how cute. He wanted to meet up with my Mum and Dad and surprise them both. So I arranged a secret meeting with Mum, and Jenny arranged a secret meeting with Dad (I haven't heard yet how that went). So I invited Mum and my sisters round to our house for an afternoon tea on Friday. Mum was wondering why I had made nice food... was it all in her honour? LOL. And then she commented on how we were all dressed up (actually I was only wearing the jeans and top that I'd put on for Lukes Podiatry appointment... I do like to look the best for such occasions. lol) I made some homemade bread, and bought some scones which looked gorgeous with cream and fruits on top.

When Steve arrived we let him in quietly. I said that Mum was in the kitchen and he told me that he would just wander in and see if she recognised him. So I went back to the kitchen where Mum was chatting away to Jenny. Steve just leant against the kitchen door post, and made nodded to me as if to say 'Oh Hazel, theres a neighbour popped in to have a word with you'. Then she looked back and saw Steve smiling at her like a Cheshire cat, and she screamed oh, OOOOOHHH, and leapt up and smothered him with a big hug. She was in shock, poor girl. She was delighted to see him again and they had heaps to talk about and catch up on. I don't think she had a clue we were trying to organise a surprise. We took some good photos. This one is my Mum and Steve.

From left to right this one is Luke, me, Mum, Steve, Hannah, Jenny and Abi.

Steve (my Steve) took this one. At the back is Steve StPs Mum, Steve, Mum, Hannah & Jude, Jenny, then the front its me and Luke, Jessie, Diamond the visiting dog (who insisted on being in the photo when she saw us all sit together!), Abi, Sam and Bevin.

We all had a lovely day catching up. It's a shame it couldn't have lasted longer, but it was still nice. I left at 7pm for a girls night out with my mate Caroline. We didn't now what to do, or where to go, as we had to be back by 10. So we took a drive up to see her plot of land, where she will soon be building their new home. Then we sat and had a coffee in Starbucks, in Newry. The evening went too quickly so we decided that a Saturday afternoon filled with shopping was called for.

Poor Jude was at a bit of a loss this weekend. Without school work she finds it hard to entertain herself. !!! Can you imagine! LOL. So I spent almost 2 hours playing with her Ello, with her and a little help from Luke. We made a fabulous shopping mall, with an upstairs balcony shopping section, 3 very fashionable ladies and 1 salesman, shelves with designer handbags, oh all sorts. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Luke made the lady that you can see standing on the balcony and he was pretty chuffed with her. We had to take a photo as we were so proud of our creativity. Why didn't they have stuff like that when I was a kid?

Much to the kids delight we had Diamond the dog visiting with us this week. She is such an angel. Luke adores her and follows her everywhere. This afternoon I discovered Luke was prettying her up with some shaving foam (thank goodness it wasn't something worse - like hair removing lotion!) He had sprayed perfect round dots of foam in a line up her back to "make her pretty". We just had to take a photo before washing it off. She now smells very manly.