Roller skating party and The Corrs in concert

It seems strange to have my youngest daughter turn twelve. It seems like only yesterday she was born. That means I have two teenage daughters, one pre-teen and a son who turned 10 a couple of weeks back.  It was something to reflect on in a week with a roller skating party and seeing The Corrs in concert.

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For some reason, Brooke decided that she wanted another roller skating party this year. She had a roller skating party at the same place for her 11th birthday and although she enjoyed it, she never made the trip there again. I figured she would go for something different, but that’s what she decided, and that’s where I am sat typing out this entry.

It’s got to be said that thankfully her roller skating is far better than mine. My roller skating story from a couple of years ago still makes friends laugh whenever I mention skating, and I still wince with embarrassment.

This year has been testing at times. After spending the first few months out of work (and in fact, three of the first four months were spent waiting to join the company I’m with now), money was tight.

So tight, in fact, that I had to stop giving pocket money to the kids for a couple of months, and things like birthday parties were put on hold while bills were paid.

Roller skating party

This has meant that Brooke’s birthday party is five weeks after her birthday. Not that anyone would realise. Brooke hasn’t once moaned at it being late, and even when I told her a few weeks into the year that it would be delayed, she took it with amazing grace. I’m incredibly grateful to her for handling it so well.

Luckily Brooke was more interested in roller skating than the quality of the welcome display.

All the kids took the financial hardship in their stride, though. Not one mention was made, for example, of the time we had to buy toilet paper from Poundland.

It was noticeable, however, that when I got paid and took the kids grocery shopping (that’s right, the fun never stops when I’m in daddy mode), they made an immediate beeline for the quilted stuff, and I’m sure a reference to bums being wiped with sandpaper was made.

Brooke getting ready to blow out the candles on both cakes.

As you can see from the picture above, Brooke had two cakes for her birthday, both made by the lovely Loz.  Loz, incidentally, is always open to chats about making cakes for people, and is incredibly reasonibly priced too.

One cake was a normal cake, the other was lactose-free, which was ideal for Brooke and one of her friends.

Work has been busy, and although I feel like things are going slowly, at least I’m starting to make things happen. I still have a lot to learn, but it’s nothing that I haven’t so far taken in my stride.

The Corrs in concert

Work has been busy, and although I feel like things are going slowly, at least I’m starting to make things happen. I still have a lot to learn, but it’s nothing that I haven’t so far taken in my stride.

This week saw a work team outing to Epsom Races. The idea was to meet early, have dinner, go to the racecourse, have some bets and then watch The Corrs in concert after the last race.

I made the mistake of offering to pick up a team member on my way. We ended up getting involved in a case that seemed to have query after query. We eventually got to the race course almost four hours after we had originally planned. That was just enough time to catch the last race and see the concert.

Did the Corrs leave me breathless? No, I was more inclined to runaway… (and there’d be more puns if I could think of more of their songs!)

I was surprised that I knew more Corrs songs than I realised, though even now I couldn’t name them, and I still think that they are mostly interchangable.  Having said that, I can now tick “seeing The Corrs in concert” off of any future bucketlist.

Good Night Guarantee

After the event we did our best to find a pub that was open, but having spent time bundling colleagues into cabs, we managed to miss last orders at the nearest pub. It also turns out that there isn’t much to do in Epsom on a Thursday night. Who’d have thought?

Irony at work - They were still banging, drilling and sawing this Good Night Guarantee sign 20 minutes after waking me up.

By 11.30pm I was tucked up in the local Premier Inn and asleep in no time. Although I slept soundly, I was woken early in the morning by a racket outside my bedroom window. I got up to see two workmen drilling and cutting through a metal “Good night guarantee” sign just a few feet from my open window.

The irony wasn’t lost on me…

by DannyUK

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