Mood swings...

Bit of a mixed day moods wise yesterday with everyone. It was D's 11th birthday and as they had a busy morning they were all coming here after lunch.

Midday Hubby walked down to Asda as his SERV mates were part of the community event there, he was only going to be an hour but was actually gone three hours.

D seemed very pleased with his present and the money in his card needed spending immediately so M walked down with D, R and E in their new matching tshirts to Asda to find Granddad and spend money. M had been on a training course in the morning which had put him in a bad mood and he and E kept arguing.  O was a bit cross he got left behind but consoled himself with the ipad. In fact the afternoon seemed dominated by screen time for the big three too, mainly Mine Craft I think.

M said he was exhausted and took himself upstairs to bed. When O got bored he took himself outside with a magnifying glass to look for bugs and when R got bored she found some experiments in her new book (bargain from a stall outside Asda), How to Fossilise Your Hamster and Other Experiments.

First was coating an egg in soot from a candle flame then putting the black egg in water and it looks silver.

This was followed by the creating static to make water bend trick.

After that she tried to extract the iron from cornflakes but we think my magnets were not strong enough.

When I went in to prepare dinner I'm not sure where my head was because I put the hot saucepan full of bubbling cheese sauce onto a plastic chopping board, when Daughter questioned what I'd done it was too late, I lifted the pan and the plastic lifted like very stringy cheese!!! Apparently I'd also burnt the sauce on the inside which Hubby informed me later was "a buggar to scrub clean".

Dinner followed without too much trouble except O wasn't hungry (he'd had an ongoing caramellow shortbread thing he'd been eating on and off since their cafe birthday breakfast) then there wasn't quite enough dessert to satisfy everyone but there was birthday cake to follow so I don't think anyone left hungry.

By the time we'd cleared the table (and the egg that R had used which got broken by O) the children had got really rowdy in the lounge, play fighting and throwing cushions (thankfully my orchid pot plant came to no real harm). So with a lot of effort by Daughter to get them all to collect up their stuff and get shoes on they were eventually packed into the car. Lots more noise outside as O didn't want to be strapped in and D was sent back to thank us properly for his birthday presents and E was cross as she had meant to ask if she could sleep over but hadn't and I then said it wasn't a convenient night anyway.

They drove off, we cleared up, sigh!
.