A very happy unbirthday to you

It all happened rather suddenly.  One moment I was talking to my Mom about how wonderful it would be to see her, and how life is too short to spend all your money on your house, and the next thing her flight was booked.  Mom's flight landed in Newcastle on Thursday and she was very quickly swept straight up into the hurry scurry of our daily life.  The boys were very excited and talked about Mama's arrival incessantly in the days leading up to it... and also speculated at length as to whether or not she would be bringing some South African sweeties for them!  Which she did - loads for them, and most importantly, loads for me!!!

On Saturday morning Tom and I were reading a book which ended in a sumptuous birthday tea and we looked at the fantastic illustartions and talked about the sausages, the cake, the jellies...  Tom asked if we could have a birthday tea.  I told him it wasn't anybody's birthday and he said maybe it was Mama's birthday?  I told him that it wasn't and that sadly we were unlikely to ever be with Mama on her birthday. He said that that was sad and in that case we should definitely have a birthday tea for her!  Very cunning at achieving his objective my little lad is!

We made jelly in fancy little cups, made a cake that we decorated with jelly tots from South Africa, we blew up balloons and cooked sausages.  Mama was very pleased with her unbirthday party and we all tucked into cake with gusto.