Luckier than the Queen

A non textile post today.

I am luckier than the Queen - she only has two birthdays - her real birthday on 21st April and her 'Official' birthday second weekend in June. This year I have THREE birthdays!! I have my Imieniny (Polish name day) on 26th July, my real birthday is next weekend - 5th June but I am attending the last part of the three part course at Urchfont, so I have had my 'Official' birthday this weekend!!!!

This year's birthday is a significant one - as I hate surprise parties etc all I wanted was to see my children. So they agreed to visit for the weekend with their respective partners. On Friday night I left my daughter at home to go and fetch my son and his girlfriend from the station, when we got home I found banners.... and balloons - all over my kitchen (it's the room we use the most) and so many flowers that my daughter had run out of vases!! My birthday treat on Saturday was a trip to Longleat - I know I was the driver and the weather kept changing from Sun to down pour but hey it was brilliant. (Click HERE for a link to the Longleat website to see more about the attractions). Sadly (or happily depending on the way you look at it - at least my car was safe) the Monkey enclosure was closed, however we did come face to face with... Zebra, and Rhino... the Tigers did not like the rain and kept running for shelter... and the Lions were miserable in the rain - they did not even want to look at passing visitors. - the misty patches are the rain drops on the window as you are not allowed to open the car windows here. There were, of course many other animals to see but I won't bore you here. After the Safari drive, as it was raining quite hard by then, we did the tour of the House, which is just brilliant. It's a shame you can't take pictures - some of the ceilings were just awesome. Sun out now so we had a picnic at the car before I tried to lose the young people in the most frustrating maze.... actually we were very good, we stayed together and worked it out together - here you can see my daughter and her boy friend on one of the bridges trying to work out our next move to get to the centre - which is the tower on the right and here are my son and his girl friend just enjoying the challenge. Then it was past the nosy Meerkats onto the boat trip to see the Silver Back Gorilla, only he did not like the rain and on to the Parrot show - which was very funny, then a quick cuddle from a beautiful Python and it was the end of a wonderful visit to Longleat. At home - you have to have a Barbecue on a Bank Holiday weekend so we did....... followed by cake and several warming (ie. spirit based) drinks!! All in all a wonderful day. Yesterday the young people chilled until lunchtime (ie they all slept!!) then it was walks into town, a lovely meal out, plenty more warming drinks and now once more they are chilling!!! Sadly the fun is coming to an end (for the moment) as three of them are going home this afternoon.