Saturday 21st October

Emma's 11th birthday today. She had already received a list of presents as long as your arm, which meant at the insistance of her mother we had to make sure we got some more, just so she had something to open. (Maybe there is something to be learned here, and what we do next year is keep her birthday presents for her birthday?)
I had successfuly hidden a birthday cake, which I produced at breakfast, complete with candles. Not quite up to the pink and white iced numbers which mum used to get for us from Downhams, but not bad. Much delight at the fact that I let them eat it for breakfast and they didn't have to have weetabix.
We spent the afternoon down on La Pinta beach, where Hop, Peach, Emma and Amy went on this giant climbing inflatable thing called The Iceberg, whilst me, Nats and the Mook amused ourselves, watching Hop and Peach cause havoc and jumping around.
Went for a lunch in one of the numerous restaurants on the front, where there was a man and his keyboard doing a sound check, so Hop got him to sing Happy Birthday to Emma, who was highly disgusted by the whole thing. ("It's SO embarrasing!")
Hop toddled off to football, and me and the Lucy spent Saturday evening down at Nats watching television whilst she cooked us a gorgeous Malaysian curry. A rare treat to have someone cook my tea for me. (and it was absolutely delicious!)