Easter

I spent a lovely four day Easter weekend with my family, here I will tell you all about it, punctuated with images.

Thursday 28th March

I can’t believe this was a week ago already! I had a 200 mile journey to drive and, as usual, the first half was crappy. The traffic was stop-start-stop-start non stop for the first 100 miles. I didn’t even get up to the 70pmh speed limit until I’d been going for two hours! Dad reckons everyone must have been going to Wales for Easter as it was just past the turn off for North Wales where it became clear.

I got to mam and dad’s house at about 10:30pm, had a couple of lagers and went to bed. They’ve bought a double bed especially for when me and Jay go to visit instead of the sofa bed. Pair of dafties :o)

Friday 29th March

My sister, Sonja, came up for lunch with some of her delicious home-made soup and her youngest daughter, six year old Eleanor. I heard Eleanor wailing before they arrived; she was excited to get there so started running but fell over and scraped both hands, both knees and somehow also managed to bang her head so she had a big egg right on the front. Poor laal body, she’d put on her party frock and posh tights to look nice for me, but had to take the tights off as soon as she got there as they were covered in blood and put on one of my dad’s t-shirts as she was cold in her sleeveless party frock!

After lunch, dad decided we would go for a walk but we wouldn’t climb a mountain. About an hour later, we were halfway up a mountain, Eleanor in her bloody tights and party frock. Nice view of the Solway Firth and Scotland across the way, though!

View of Skiddaw; it’s a good job we weren’t climbing this!

Sonja, Dad and Eleanor doing their obligatory catalogue pose.

Eleanor found a dead shrew and had to inspect it; can you see how tiny it is??

Dad makes a snowman

and Eleanor throws it for Meg. Taken on my phone, I’m quite proud of this shot!

Saturday 30th March

Today the local brewery, Jennings, had an Easter fun day for the kids, so we took Isabel and Eleanor down. They had an egg painting competition where it was blatantly obvious that most of the eggs were painted by the parents. Isabel did hers in flowers and I did a bee. Bel wanted to enter mine with hers together and we won 2nd place in her age category! Hehe.

There was also an orienteering type treasure hunt. One of the clues was next to a battle box.

What is a battle box??

Sonja joins in with the colouring in, next to all the crates of Jennings.

Sunday 31st March

Ewan McGregor’s birthday! Also, Easter Sunday. Today we went to a local garden centre, where my nana was running a craft fair stall and they had all sorts of things; a petting zoo, hedge maze, bouncy castle, butterfly house. We spent a couple of hours there, it was great fun.

A strange photo opportunity where two of the holes aren’t big enough to fit your head through. I’m the bee.

Sleeping ferret.

Eleanor enjoying the bouncy castle.

Meg the sheepdog, scared of sheep. They have four horns!

Sheep stares at me with its scary eyes and says “oooo”

I photobomb Sonja’s photo of the butterfly coccoons.

Scotland across the Solway Firth from Allonby

Entry into the park requires a responsiolble adult. I don’t think I know any responsiolble adults.

After the trip out, we went to the cemetary to visit my mam’s sister’s grave. She died in 1950 when she was six weeks old but never had a headstone until very recently. The butterflies were in a bunch of flowers I sent my mam for her birthday and she gave them to her sister; they’re still there several months later :o)

There were many many purple crocuses everywhere, very pretty

We also went to visit my Uncle John’s grave, he died 10 years ago yesterday. While we were walking through, mam and dad were pointing out all the graves of the people they knew, it seemed they knew half the people in there!

Have a random photo of Eleanor sitting on a rock, pretending to be a mermaid.

We were right next to Wordsworth House at the time, where William Wordsworth was born and lived for a while. But when you’ve been seeing it regularly your whole life, you forget that it’s a landmark and don’t take photos!

Mam and dad are moving house soon. They’ve lived in that house for 22 years. I lived there for nine years before I moved out and have been visiting them regularly the rest of the time, so it’s going to be really strange going to visit them in a house I’ve never lived in.

I’m poorly sick at the moment. I was on my own at work yesterday as my boss’ daughter has chicken pox so she was at home and my other workmate was off sick. Last night I didn’t sleep at all because of this horrible head cold but I went to work anyway as we can’t leave the office empty. My workmate turned up looking like death warmed up and then started crying because of how ill she was. Why she went to work, I have no idea. Our HR manager told both of us to go home. I said I didn’t mind staying and felt guilty leaving the office empty; especially as Amy was obviously more ill than me as she was crying and I wasn’t! But HR manager insisted, we both had to go home and the office would just have to cope with being empty for a day. I don’t know who’s going to do the post or answer the post but I’m sure the business won’t collapse. I haven’t had a day off sick for about five years and spent the whole day at home, watching films and sleeping and feeling guilty! I still feel like crap, I hope I feel well enough to go in tomorrow or the office will be empty again!

Send healing thoughts!