21 September 2013

Some days you just gotta......

.......laugh. I figure it's all you can do really when things unexpectedly go a bit tits up!

It was an early start to the morning, with an excited boy ready to start his birthday before 5.30am.


Chatting to Nana & Poppa on the phone before breakfast

Which turned into a loooooooooong wait till 6.45am before we were all ready to start opening presents.

He's been hanging out to get a new lunchbox so he's ready to join all the other four year-olds on Wednesdays at daycare with their lunchbox treats.


We'd decided we'd finally give him the cool Smartmax Magnetic blocks that I've had hidden away in the cupboard for a rainy day before the kids start to grow out of it.

 

The boys were also completely in awe of the Playmobil football game that Daddy found online. He's good like that.


It was a pretty fun morning for the boys here at home, and I'm pretty sure they'd have happily stayed home all day to play. But off to daycare, school and work they went.

We all met up at daycare this afternoon to have a celebratory birthday afternoon tea for the birthday boy. And Mylo was BEAMING when we arrived, enjoying being the centre of attention for the day. He was so excited to be seated at the head of the table, and choosing the song that everyone sung while the food was being prepared. He loves the national anthem so with hand on heart they all patriotically sang God Defend New Zealand.



The kids all enjoyed a slice of the football field cake we'd whipped up in a joint effort, Mark the baker, me the decorator.



So it wasn't till after we left all the celebrations behind that the afternoon started getting a little more interesting. 

After leaving daycare - well trying to leave three times mind you after I forgot the board the cake went on and the container we'd brought it in - we went off to get a warrant for my new little car which expires while we're away. And I wasn't really expecting it to fail - boo! So now we've got to try and get the car fixed and re-warranted in the next two weeks. Just what I needed to add to an already long list of to dos to be done before we board the plane. Sigh!

We then headed over to Jules aka Baba's for a special birthday dinner. The car was chocka full of stuff by this point and I made the decision not to bother getting the jackets out of the car as it was quite warm. That piece of information only becomes relevant a little later in the story. Baba is like a surrogate grandmother to our kids and it was ages since we'd hung out at her place. She also had her 13 year-old grand-daughter and friend there for the afternoon. Coincidentally, it was her granddaughter Kiki's birthday today too!

Mylo, for reasons unknown to man, got total stage fright at seeing these young ladies who he wasn't expecting to be there - it was like the worst case of stage fright I've seen in him. He wouldn't talk, wouldn't move and I finally managed to coax him after several minutes into sitting next to me in one of Baba's lovely antique chairs. He curled up like a little cat as close to me as he could get.

Which should have been fine. And it was for about fifteen minutes. But he was obviously so out of sorts with his stage fright at seeing these young ladies that the next thing I knew we were both sitting in a pool of wee. Yup. And this is the boy who has not had an accident for the better part of a year and a half. Sigh. 

So he was soaking, my jeans and knickers were soaking. Baba's flash-looking chair and cushion that we were sitting in was soaking.

Luckily I still had his daycare bag in the car which had a spare set of trousers although no undies. So commando it was. And even more luckily for me, Baba and I are roughly the same size although she's a lot shorter than me so I was able to borrow a pair of her jeans, walking around for the rest of the evening in tight jeans at half mast and commando-style too.

Daddy turned up with our KFC which we enjoyed until the mother of all thunderstorms hit just before 6pm. During dinner we'd also been talking a bit about the earthquake as Baba had been away overseas and missed them both so we were recounting a little the events as they'd happened. I noticed that Noah suddenly looked quite pale and he said he felt sick. Just as Mark decided he'd better get going to take him home, the thunder and lightning and torrential rain kicked into top gear.

Remember ALL our jackets are in the cars at this point.

By now the thunder was literally overhead and shaking the house. Mark and Noah disappeared off into the darkness just as it started hailing. Luckily, Baba also had a jacket I could borrow. So now I was dressed head-to-toe in Baba's clothes. We cut a hole in a plastic bag for Mylo to wear as a makeshift jacket to get back to the car.  And off we went into the storm.


We had to cross 2 virtual rivers running down Baba's steep street just to get to the car and you can see from this wee video clip that the back wheel of my car was covered in an almost waterfall the water was gushing so fast down the street.

Once we finally made it into the car, Mylo and I paused for a minute looking at each other soaking wet, and he gaily informed me 'that was fun Mum, can we do it again?', whilst I'm thinking 'on your own love'.

The roads home were treacherous with massive surface flooding everywhere and manholes being dislodged on a few streets with the power of the water buildup behind them.

Two drowned rats happy to be home

We finally got home to a warm bath having been run by Daddy (my hero!), but a cat who was MIA after being locked out in that storm. While we bathed, I talked through with Noah his feelings and apologised for bringing up the earthquake - it seems the combination of reliving the memories of that day with the storm hitting right at that moment with some pretty loud thunder crashes had been a bit too much for his sensitive wee soul so it was a lesson to this mama not to assume that it's fine to discuss stuff like this so openly in front of him and to be a bit more circumspect.

Thankfully, Murphy (the cat) finally turned up after Mark spent a few minutes walking up and down the street calling for him.

We ended the night quietly with the boys playing a little game of footy together on the new mini pitch, Noah reading me a poem about the Moa they are studying at school, and telling me some facts I didn't know about Troodon and Utahraptor - that kid is ALL about the dinosaurs at the moment - his knowledge is quite astounding.

 







And with two tired and sleepy boys tucked up in bed, it felt rather lovely to get into PJ's (and fresh knickers after having to go commando in jeans that then also got soaked through in the rain) and to sit down with a hot lemon and honey drink!

Some days you just gotta go with the flow and laugh the craziness off right?!

7 comments :

Ange - Tall, Short and Tiny said...

What an eventful day!! Hope Mylo enjoyed his birthday x Also - LOVE the Playmobil game!

Katie said...

Sounds like a crazy day! Love the cake :-)

Leonie said...

Sounds like a memorable day for everyone! Hope the weekend is a bit quieter x

Leanne M said...

The storm was impressive wasn't it?! You had a very eventful day. Love the cake! Happy birthday Mylo!

Sammy said...

What a day! Glad it all turned out ok x

Jaz from Treacy Family said...

Oh Meg!! What a great recount. Sheesh those days are stressful, but what fun you also had together. Pretty cool really..........in hindsight xxx

PaisleyJade said...

Wowsers! What a crazy day!! Glad you all got home safely! Totally have to just go with the flow some days!

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails