I've copied,pasted and done everything the Halcion website tells me to do but I STILL can't get the 'old' comments format back!!!!

Anyway, Hello!

I had every intention of blogging last night but after an exhausting weekend Eric and I were in bed by 8pm and I think I read about 2 paragraphs of my book (China Lake by Meg Gardener, quite an original story and I am enjoying it but there is something I don't like about it and I can't put my finger on it!) before falling asleep. The moral of the weekend is, 9 girls for a sleepover is too many!! Saturday was busy with running in and out of town for netball and then to pick the girls up from the pools. In between of course was getting the dining room decorated with streamers and balloons, and preparing the food. I thought we had made quite a good job but Harriette didn't seem to appreciate it (Alice did!). On collecting the girls we took them to the video store to get 2 movies. Now here the trouble began. Harri has a nice bunch of friends, generally, but some of them come from quite religious familys and whose parents have strict rules about what they can watch (no Harry potter for example). Now I don't have a problem with this (except the deprivation that any child must suffer being excluded from the wonders of HP) but...one of these girls left the video store in tears because one of the other girls had said "We can't watch any good movies because of..." Oh dear. Anyway we got them home once they had agreed on 2 choices. Eric and I then spent hours washing up and serving food, washing up and serving food, washing up and serving food....
We then disappeared off to the bedroom and read. The girls watched one video. All well. Went and got them Milo's (with marshmallows) and settled them down for video number 2. 10 minutes later H and one other came in complaining because some of the girls were chatting and they couldn't hear. I went out and it turns out 4 of the girls had seen the movie and weren't prepared to watch it quietly again. So I slung them into Harriettes room. Apparently one girl was upset that Harriette wasn't entertaining her well enough! Later, when the video had finished, I tried unsucessfully to get them to pipe down and go to sleep (they were all crashed out on the living room floor). We then gave up and went to bed. Later Alice came in ,"can't sleep, they're all talking too much". She climbed in with us. I went to sleep. Then Harriette woke me up tapping me on the shoulder saying "This is my worst birthday ever!!" She had moved into her bedroom (which adjoins the living room) and still could not get to sleep because of the chatter. I should also add that on her birthday Harriette was awake at 4am and this was now more than 20 hours later! I then went in and told them to pipe down again. One particular girl could be heard above all others but just kept saying "it wasn't me". She is very good at that! Anyway I then had to stop Harriette launching in to this girl and having a full blown row (I had visions of said girl demanding I phone her parents at 1.30am to collect her)! They were all on speaking terms in the morning though - just.

Next morning we finally managed to drag ourselves out of bed. When I asked the girls to lay the table for breakfast one said "we shouldn't have to were guests" tongue in cheek I think/hope!!

Three of the girls were collected and taken to church and we delivered the others home later in the morning. We took Sarah and Kathryn home last and spent the whole afternoon sitting in the sun on Richard and Robyns deck chatting and regailing the traumas of the last 30 odd hours. It was so nice to catch up with them and it was a wonderful wind down time. Kids were off playing netball or something.

So all-in-all probably the most unsucessful of birthdays. I must say it was only 2 girls that caused most of the disagreements and generally the others were all well behaved and very pleasant.

So I hope that this all explains the lack of blog yesterday.

Today is the first day of the school holidays. Harriette has these lesions on her face which she had a few weeks ago when she had a chest infection. The antibiotics for her chest cured it but they have returned. I spoke to the practice nurse who said to take her back to Andy. Eric did so this afternoon and Andy told Harriette she had to have 2 weeks off school. She was so excited until she realised that she was on holiday for 2 weeks and he was winding her up. Robyn had previously told me she thought these were 'school sores' and could not understand my quizzical look. Apparently they are a staph infection and quite common amongst school kids here. From what Eric relayed of Andy's comments it sounds like Robyn was right. More antibiotics, creams and iodine for Harri.

Bridget has just commented that I am writing a long blog, which means you will probably have given up reading it by now so I will finish.

Night night all.