Summer days

Isn't it beautiful weather? It's so nice to get a summer this year. My garden is growing so beautifully with all this sun shine to help it on. I bought the kids a cheap little paddling pool yesterday and they spent the whole afternoon splashing and spraying each other.

Yesterday was spent running errands. A trip to B&Q to buy heaps of gravel, shopping in Sainsburys for food. That actually took the best part of the day. I bought the cheapest gravel they had (£1.98 a 25kg bag) and some plastic edging. A lovely lady (its unusual to find helpful friendly staff at B&Q, from my experience) helped me lift 10 bags of gravel into the car. We are gravelling all the bits of ground between the veggie beds. Its only half done but it looks heaps better already. So much more finished and homely. I'll take a photo when it's done.

We had dinner in the garden last night, chicken pie with salad from the garden. Steve and Sam both said it was the nicest dinner they ever had! Even Luke eat his (although nothing green was consumed, as usual).

Today we took a trip to Heather's house. Primarily it was to pick up a big trolley of Davy's for Steve to use at his book fair. But we made an afternoon of it. The kids spent hours splashing in C's huge paddling pool. Even Luke had fun in the water. I'm thinking of hiring Sam out as an entertainer for little girls parties, as he was fabulous with the girls. They spent the whole time giggling at him and basically having a great time. Luke was happy as larry playing in the conservatory with all C's barbie cars. Heather and I pulled our chairs up to the pool and sat with our feet in the water until it got too boisterous for us. Davy didn't emerge from his office in the 5 hours that we were there (wimp!) Luke fell asleep in the car on the way home at 6.30pm. When I got him out of the car and lay him on the sofa he didn't wake up so I put him to bed. He woke up at 8 for his night time bottle of milk but went back to sleep again. All that fresh air and water must have zonked him.

Steve has spent all evening loading the van with tons of boxes of books. Tomorrow the 10 day book fair in Newcastle starts. That's ten 14 hour working days (5 of which I've been roped into doing!) Tomorrow is going to be such a hard day for him. When he's finished loading tonight he will crash into bed and at the crack of dawn he will be up taking the van to Newcastle. Then he will unload it there, drive back to our house and load up another van load. These boxes of books are VERY heavy. It's back breaking work. He'll drive that load to newcastle, unload it, then spend all day till 10pm sorting the books and getting the fair ready. The fair will run from 8am till 10pm for the ten days. I'm not sure which days I'mpenciledd in for doing yet, but I can't wait (detecting the sarcasm?)

Sam has finally written all the thank you letters to send to people for his birthday presents / money. Tomorrow he has to write a letter to someone at his Granny's work who kindly sent him a heap of football stickers (no Jill, he hasn't forgotten). He also has 2 letters to reply to. His pen pal from the USA sent him a box of goodies from his trip to Disney World. That was very exciting! And his pen pal from the Czech Republic sent a beautiful photo of herself in a picture frame. He's just so popular!

Now its 9.11pm and I'm going out to water my tomatoes and to see if Steve has fallen asleep amid abarragee of banana boxes containing various musty ancient best sellers.