Tuesday – was too jiggered yesterday too type.

Long weekend though – that was good. I met Louise & the kids in Halifax on the Thursday; stayed on he train & went to Sainsburys to pick them all up & then homeward bound. Not greatly interesting for me, but the kids were happy (well – maybe Jack was a little sanguine because he hasn’t so keen on being out as the rest. I think the reason for it all was that Jude wanted a pencil case, but that was probably the prerequisite that Louise required to be heading out with them.

So – why was I off on the Friday? There was a Halloween do on the backstreet that we were supposed to e preparing for Now, the real preparation here wasn’t settling decorations or anything of that nature. Because there was a possibility of adults roaming into our house we needed to have a general tidy. Not really reason enough for to be taking a day off… no… Well – OK – the real reason for taking a day off was that it was half term & the kids were home & Louise asked me to take the day off: that’s all I need as a reason. Fact is though; I mainly did tidying up.

I found that the vacuum cleaner (DC08) I got from the market had no filters at all which set off my asthma a little as it bumped up the stairs & shook some dusk out into it’s ‘air out’. That was not so clever & I ordered a new filter off ebay. It’s not only me though – it’s Jude as well – it caused him a few wheezy days as well which was a shame. He had been all geared up for Halloween wanting face paint etc, but when it came to dressing up he decided it better to play & then get in the bath & into his pyjamas… It was only Debra (neighbour) popping in to try to extricate her twins (Gabe & Jules – a little older than Esme) from the wooden train track set out in the back room & commenting to Jude that he was missing the fun & encouraging him out that made him change back out of his pyjamas & into civvies (not halloweenies) & join in with everyone.

As a whole the party went well. Eve was first to be dressed up as she had Evie’s Halloween birthday party to attend before the ‘street’ party.

While she was away we brought down the enormous box that had arrived the other day from Hazel – what could it be? There were 4 smaller ‘Cadbury’s’ labelled boxes for the kids. This was handed out & they were ripped open & contained a Halloween bucket filled with backs of Halloween themed animal biscuits & a pack of Halloweeny marshmallows. Jude & Esme started tucking into the biscuits straight away & were keen to be going out to to trick or treat, but it was too early.

This was only stalled until Jack joined in, getting his Skeleton costume on & wanting to head out with his bucket, egged on by a desperate Esme. So as it was starting to get dark we let them out to some of the neighbours.