A family evening

Daddy is flavour of the month with Barney at the moment. Since I started working almost full time in the shop, and Dan has been at home with the kids, my popularity has plummeted with our youngest who groans in despair if its my day to stay at home instead of Daddy. Daddy is, apparently, more fun and plays games. I lay in bed on Friday morning (my day off - Dan's day to work) with Barney and asked him some questions on the matter. What is Daddy better at? He's better at playing, laughing, having fun, jumping on the trampoline and doing fun stuff. So what is Mummy better at? He struggled to answer this and then proudly came up with "you are better at sleeping". Well, I had to laugh at that. So I set about making my day off work as fun as possible, in an attempt to win back some credibility. The problem is, you see, that I'm working maybe 5 or 6 days a week. Then when I get a day off there is always some huge chore to do - like gutting and cleaning one of the kids rooms. So I never seem to be fun. So on Friday morning I spent an hour playing in a duvet tent on my bed, with Barney. The tent was his cafe, and he cooked me all sorts of culinary delights including raspberry sandwiches, tuna salad, fish fingers and chips, and a magic cherry pie that changes flavours with every bite. Barney seemed to enjoy this, but later in the day when we were telling Daddy what fun we'd had he said "that wasn't playing Mummy that was just doing stuff on the bed". Sigh.

I did a few necessary chores and then we went out to play on the trampoline, but I jumped too high and sent him flying through the air, landing on his right hand and causing immense agony to my three year old. I thought I made up for it by doing a 20 minute intense workout on the trampoline with him - chasing him in circles around it, jumping, copying his moves (I must have lost half a stone). Then, in desperation I took him to tesco cafe for lunch. This was a good move I think and certainly boosted my popularity, although apparently Daddy prefers to take him for breakfast, which is nicer. Hmmm.

Barney had been asking to have a BBQ in the garden for ages, so in Tescos I said he could help me buy the meat to cook, and then we would surprise Daddy with a BBQ when he got home from work. He was certainly excited about this and we had a lovely family evening in the garden. It was a warm day, but since I've just got back from Dubai I had to eat my BBQ under a sleeping bag for warmth! Here are some photos.

Mummy and Daddy relaxing and enjoying the fact that their eldest child is now old enough to cook food on a BBQ unaided. Wow, finally we can chill a bit.

Here's young Jimmie doing his thing, preparing food for all us hungry carnivores.

(Yeah, I know, its not raw or vegan)

Dan set the camera to take a shot of all of us.