On the Saturday of the Easter weekend, we went to our friends Paul and Jeanette's for a Nepali dinner. It was really fantastic - they are super cooks. When we arrived they were both wearing genuiney Nepali garb; Jeanette looked lovely in her sari, Paul, well, I don't know what to say - the nappy style trousers just didn't really do it for me!
Mature as always (I blame it on my brothers). Who on earth would be childish enough to stick those two diamate bindis there? Surely a normal person would have felt complete with just the one in the middle of her forehead?! (there are bindiss there honestly, but you can only see them when the picture is enlarged!).
On Monday we went back to Jeanette and Paul's for a stonking barbeque. It was a lovely warm day (relatively speaking, of course!)and we spent from lunchtime to evening sitting in the garden enjoying the unexpected balmy weather. We were actually celebrating the birthday of their youngest, but as they said themselves, it was also brill excuse for several sets of friends to get together while the children played (and did an Easter Egg hunt). Lizzie was a star helping with the little ones - she's becoming such a huge help with Harry and his little parnters in crime.
The following day, Tuesday, Richard decided he'd go back to work as we were no longer going on holiday, so the children and I did holiday type stuff - a special treat movie afternoon, bowling, meeting with friends et cetera.
On Tuesday evening, Richard took the girls to see the Medicine Hat Tigers play a hockey game and the following evening Richard and I went with a group of friends. We both really enjoy going to the games - they have a super atmosphere and the young teenage energy the players display is quite something. They skate after the puck with such reckless abandon, it's quite thrilling to watch (although I wouldn't like to be one of their mothers watching - they do get pretty battered).
Lizzie was terribly delighted as the mascot came to sit next to her.
The following night when Richard and I went to the Game, we treated ourselves to a terribly romantic, fine dining experince. I had a Canadian delicacy I hadn't sampled before; Taco-in-a-bag.
It's a bag of taco crisps opened, the vendor then adds lettuce, salsa, cheese, soured cream and ground beef to the bag, hands it over with a fork and that's it! It was actually pretty nice - a welcome change to the norm of burgers and chips everywhere here. We finished our treat with ice cream in a cone. The whole evening was lovely actually. A bit of grown up time watching the game and eating rubbish!
The latter part of the week I spent preparing for Jeanette's surprise 40th birthday party. Her husband had organised food and a slide show but had asked Clare and I to kinda pull it together so that she wouldn't suspect anything. You will be surprised to learn that I found myself incapable of letting him buy a couple of foil "It's your birthday!" banners from the dollar store, so I asked if he would like me to come up with an idea to decorate the Jubilee Arms (our most charming orange-varnished-wood,-chips-with-everything-pseudo-pub here in Ralston). Black, pink and zebra print were the obvious choices for the birthday girl and I spent the next few days going to the fabric shop, drawing chandeliers on black card and sticking on jewels. The end result looked pretty nice (only in the evening light!) and my main objective was accomplished: as much orange wood covered as possible!
Noo, Jeanette and Clare (three people who have great difficulty finding anything to say about everything!).
The balloon tree (you may well recognise this, Ma!).
It looked really super in real life - I think several balloons had disappeared by the time this was taken. Clare did the hard work with the axe aquiring this huge branch, I finished it off with my wonderful talent for weight gain, flinging a belt over the overhang, and then with feet well off terra firma, using my dead weight (and letting out a Tarzan whoop) the branch came crashing to the ground (school girl error: it was rather bigger on the ground than it looked when still attached to the tree). As you can imagine, the whole episode was accompanied with so much giggling and snorting laughter that I for one, felt quite feeble and debilitated by the time we'd pulled ourselves together and the branch was in the pub. Most of the laughter was of course as a result of imagining the looks on our husbands' faces if they could see what we were going to my garden! Clearly, it was imperative for the success of the operation for us to work speedily as it was a Friday afternoon and no-one knows how early the chaps will come home for the weekend....
The children were really great that day. I had been wondering how on earth we would get the place done in time for the party with the sprogs on school holidays, but Clare's daughter and Lexi blew up all the balloons for us and Lizzie, did the most wonderful job looking after Claire's little boy and Harry, who are more or less the same age. She was great - she soley entertained them from 2pm until 5ish. Took them to the park, played games with them, gave them food, the works (we weren't far away we live almost opposite the pub!). Just as we finished and I was walking home, I saw what I thought was a new wife on the patch walking along with her two children. A few paces closer and I realised it was Lizzie with the two boys wrapped up tight and warm coming to see us! She has grown up so much recently.
See what I mean?! My sunhat is part of a long line of things that have migrated from my wardobe to Lizzie's as we are both the same size now. How long is this going to last?.....
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