Ruths B'day 2011

Today was an odd one, but good. We were meant to be spending the afternoon with Johns parents at our cottage but they cried off, which was sad.
So what did we do?
In the morning we had some to and fro with phone calls from my folks hoping we would not over whelm them all day or even all morning. So we went scrumping for apples that we saw just lying on the ground and in the tree in the hotel grounds. This was fun and everyone joined in.
Job done we set off to Ruths for her birthday celebrations. First of all Ruths family and ours went to the local play park at Humsaugh. Much fun had with the park being pretty good and some circuits being invented to really defuse energy! Ruth competed fully with her 4 year old son, which was odd. Zach filled his pants so we headed back to Ruths to sort this and do the present thing! She got a fair haul of presents, and she looked fab in the dress I had bought her.
We had a vegetarian North African stew which was lovely and which I have the recipe for (Ruth gave me the Hugh Fernly Wittingstall veg book for X mas) followed by sticky toffee pudding. Everone stating one slice was quite enough and they were stuffed meant that I had one helping only, to save my blushes!
After lunch we did what we had told everyone we would do and left.
I had lost my mobile phone and the mornings work had included locating it at the theatre Royal in Newcastle, so that is where we headed from Ruths. Phone retrieved we stopped at a Morrisons and bought a family DVD which on arriving at our cottage we watched. It was a good film (Up) and fun to watch with the kids as they had seen it before and were happy telling me what the heck was going on! After that we had a swim - really warm and all to ourselves. Fun time had by all.
Back to the cottage and tuna and pasta for dinner. more alcohol and chocs with evening TV.
An excellent day!