The month began with a bang, as we drove back home just before the Easter holiday began, and my son and family drove down on Good Friday. My sister arrived shortly afterwards, so we had a full house. I had hoped to see my other son and family too, but they took turns to be ill over the holiday, so we never managed it.
My son had to drive home to Manchester on Easter Monday, and my sister went back to work the next day, but my daughter-in-law and children stayed for 10 or 11 days. My grandson loves our house, and he can run about all the place in the 5 acre shared garden (for those who don't recognise Imperial measurements, it's more than 2 hectares). I did enjoy being home again, and the garden started to be lovely - we were very lucky with the weather, of course. This is one of the magnolias at the front of the house.
Unfortunately, I got a virus of some sort, and was thoroughly unwell for a couple of days.
Once I had recovered, we drove back to Manchester, having spent two really enjoyable weeks at home. Then we had to get ready for my grandson's fourth birthday, which was quite lively!
This is the birthday table, just before the guests arrived.
As you can see, it wasn't a big party - only 5 or 6 little friends, but that was quite enough. Quite a few of his classmates have invited all the rest of the class to birthday parties, but my grandson hasn't enjoyed any of them; it gets too noisy and rowdy for him, and on a couple of occasions he's come home in tears. He's much happier with just a few friends.
He demanded a cake with Thomas the Tank engine on it. Fortunately, the very wonderful Asda will print any photo you have onto white cake icing, so he chose what he wanted and my son designed the resulting A4 sized artwork, which was duly printed onto an A4 sized cake. I failed to photograph it without all the children in it, so I'm afraid you'll just have to imagine it, but he was delighted with it! It had his three favourite engines on it, as well as his name, and was much admired.
We were also fortunate with the weather for his birthday, so the adults sat in the garden in the sun, while the children were able to run about outside as well as inside, and play on the birthday trampoline. He had asked for a small trampoline for his birthday, 'just like the one belonging to the boy next door'. Unfortunately, it hadn't arrived by the night before the birthday, so we faced a trampoline-less birthday. Then my son had the happy thought of borrowing the child next door's one once my grandson was in bed.
He had no idea that the trampoline he unwrapped next morning wasn't really his, and bounced on it happily. When the real one arrived, we quietly substituted it for the borrowed one, and he hasn't noticed. They are both extremely similar, the one we bought him was the same colour, only very slightly larger and it has a different company name stencilled onto it, but he didn't notice that.
I was sorry to miss most of the spring in my own garden, but we have had some lovely spring flowers up here as well.
These gorgeous trees are at the entry to the park we walk through to school every day. We're very fortunate that the park also has a small playground, so, unless it's raining, my grandson plays on the climbing frame and slides every day after school, which gets rid of a lot of his surplus energy.
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