Send gin

Well, that was an experience I don't want to repeat any time soon.

They played relatively well together. One thing I learned about little girls is that they can be in floods of tears one minute because we didn't like what the other person said and then they are best friends the next.

Dinner, bath, pjs and bed went smoothly. Silly Granny was lulled into a false sense of security. 

It was a hot night, I will give them that. Lily wanted the light on. Sally did not. Lily touched Sally. Sally touched Lily. I put a small pillow between them but that didn't work because now they wanted to cuddle each other. Both girls had melt downs and missed their mummy, daddy and sister. And dog. And cats. And other grandparents. These meltdowns were not simultaneous. Oh no. Finally at around midnight I decided that I would sleep with Lily and Sally could sleep in our bed with Grumpy.

Half an hour later I had been kicked out of a queen sized bed by a sleeping 5 year old.

Himself kindly said he would sleep on the couch and I could sleep with Sally. We had to keep the dogs away from the bedrooms because Jinx had taken a liking to Lily's teddy - another source of angst - and the cats were on my side of the door because their food and shitty litter is in our bathroom. I lay awake listening for Lily and could not drop off to sleep. Just as I was about to head into the land of nod Max decided that he missed his canine brothers and yowled the house down pacing up and down the corridor outside where Lily was sleeping.

The last time I checked the clock it was just gone 3am. Sleep had eluded me. I tossed and turned and finally fell asleep to be woken just after 6 by Lily who had had enough and was ready to get up and get going.

Poor Grumpy had slept on the couch the dogs use (the 'good' one was too short for him) and his allergies flared up overnight.

Sally was up about an hour after Lily and they played and argued until 9 when One arrived, followed shortly after by Three. Himself had gone off to bed and slept until mid morning. 

Three came back around lunch time to start going through Himself's parents' photos and papers. He has an interest in his history and his mother in law studies genealogy so she can point him in the right direction.

The photos date back to the late 1800s and there are some really interesting ones of my mother in law's family and we could trace a lot through the war to when they arrived in the UK. Father in law's stuff only starts during the war.

This was when Three going through some very old documents from Germany during the war using Google translate to work out what they were. It seems like a lot were extracts of births, deaths and marriages which MIL's mother probably procured to prove they were legit. Although they were from Poland there were at some time or another under German occupation hence the Germans being able to proved the documentation going back three generations. Three will research more. It will be interesting to see what he finds.

It was made all the more special using this to look at tiny photos taken during the war to identify people. It was in with their papers and I reckon could tell a story or two.

Three has now gone home and I am going to set up the scrabble board. To hell with the diet - I am going to have cheese and biscuits and a decent chardonnay tonight. I think I deserve it.