13th Birthday achieved

 I think I managed to deliver a really good 13th Birthday. We all had day off on Friday to celebrate the big day with son.

On his request he started the day with a full English breakfast before opening his presents and cards. There was then a bit of a gap before we took dog over to a friends for the night and then went to Spring Farm near Ashdown Forest. Here husband walked a Llama and son walked an Alpaca - as it's not really my thing - I just walked along next to son.

There were 2 Llamas and 18 Alpaca's in total - so a few different groups and the couple that ran the farm also came with us.

Theoretically it should have been a lovely restful thing to do - walking through fields of wild flowers in the sunshine. Unfortunately, the couple that ran the farm kept a constant commentary about what they did on the farm, where they found the alpaca's, who the alpaca's parents were, what they liked to eat, where they had been to see other alpaca's, where they met, how long they'd lived on the farm, why they moved to the farm.... 

They were lovely people, but we were with them for about 2 hours and after half an hour my brain started to bleed from the constant battering of chatter. Nobody else seemed to suffer like me, so let's just put it down to my horrific social skills. It didn't help that I hadn't received the memo to tell me the sun was going to come out - so I was very inappropriately dressed in long trousers and a thick sailing sweatshirt.

We then went home for a couple of hours before heading into Brighton to take son to JB's American Diner in Brighton. Son did really well (he likes diners - I hate them - so he gets to go to one every birthday). usually he has 2 huge milkshakes on the trot, makes himself sick and doesn't actually eat anything. This time he was really careful not to have too much so he could actually enjoy some food.

The diner was really good actually - definitely the best one we've been to - both from authentic ambience and the food. So I think we'll stick with JBs from now on. So that's part of 14th Birthday already planned!

On the Saturday it was his birthday party - the kids were dropped off at ours early and then we headed to Churchill Square Brighton, where there is a VR place. It was fantastic, they had a huge mix of VR experiences, shoot'em'ups, virtual rollercoasters, driving etc. The kids could pretty much do all of them in the time we had in there.

I admit that there was a huge amount of jealousy from me - I was desperately hoping one of the kids would drop out so I could take their place, but no luck.

A few really funny moments. I was watching son and one of his friends doing the virtual ghost train rollercoaster. They couldn't hear or see me. Their reactions were amazing. Right towards the end I just leant forward and put a hand on each of their knees - they literally leapt out of their skins. I found it very funny (fortunately so did they), but decided not to repeat the action as I didn't want a child's heart attack on my conscience.

One of the other kids walked into a wall at one point, another punched a wall and one of sons friends came over to hassle him when he was in the middle of shooting an arrow - at this point son managed to punch friend in the throat. So lesson learnt, when somebody has a VR headset on don't go up and hassle them.

After the VR I took them all for a burger. Talk about spoilt - they were all up in arms because they said they'd much rather go for Sushi. I explained to them that I had no intention of spending that much money on them - so in the end they settled for burgers.

After this we headed home. One of sons friends stayed over and some of our friends came over in evening. When we had a huge Alice in Wonderland themed birthday tea - with cake stands and drink me / eat me signs etc.

It didn't end their either as on Sunday there was another party - this time one of son's friends (the one that got punched in the throat), this was raft building over in Shoreham by the river. A great party - the kids made a raft and then took it out on the river. Really great fun.

So all I can say - is beat that for a weekend to remember! On top of that - gosh presents have changed since I was a kid - in my day friends who came to your party would give you a book or some colouring pens - nothing really to write home about - but you were thrilled as you only got presents on Birthday and Christmas. For sons birthday - on top of the wifi headsets that we and grandparents went halves on - son make about £200 in cash and about £50 in vouchers!!!! That's quite a haul.

I mentioned I wanted to do the VR thing. I'm going to set up an adults session on it soon. All the kids can be dropped off at ours and we'll head into town for some fun. There are some benefits to the kids getting older. I'm confident we can leave them alone for a couple of hours without too much chaos (famous last words). Husband remembers the first time his parents did that with him and they played tennis with apples in the sitting room (could have been worse!).

Son now has a huge level of anti-climax - but he goes back to school on Friday - so it was a great full stop to his holidays (I say modestly).

With all we've been up to recently I've managed to put loads of weight on. I'm now going to see whether I can get myself sorted out before Christmas. There are no more exciting plans to take me off the path - so watch this space.

Actually, weight loss may end up being easier than I anticipate. Every week I do my weekly shop online and it's delivered later in the week. I went through to do the shop last night and about 3/4 of the products I normally order were not available. There are real problems with getting lorry drivers at the moment - a mixture of Brexit and COVID. Watch this space to see how much worse it gets - this week I couldn't even get strawberries! Let's face it - I'm getting quite old now and in my living history I don't remember there being empty shelves - well except for when the idiots went panic buying at the beginning of the pandemic.

If we start to have to ration food I may end up being at my target weight quicker than I anticipated - always a silver lining!