Double figures birthday and a blue rosette

My handsome 10 year old

What a day - actually, what a week, no, I'll get it right, what a month!

We have been so hectic, something we promised ourselves wouldn't happen once we moved here. There were times I didn't know whether I was coming or going and my diary wasn't much help with jotter notes, crossings out and what-have-you!! It's been a month of unconfirmed events and visitors, so things would suddenly happen at the last moment, which is lovely, but it meant having to juggle lots of things around and I can go into panic mode when this happens. Anyway, July is nearly done, and August, although another very busy month for us, is looking more settled with a not so messy diary - yet!

Katie's Cross Country Clear Round and Eventer Trial took place yesterday after much tooing and froing from the riding school as the weather had been so bad their stables had been completely flooded. It was also Ben's 10th birthday so he was hoping and praying the event would be cancelled - it wasn't! The sun shone and everything went ahead as planned. Ben, the ever tolerant and jolly chappy, enjoyed the day as a friend also turned up to watch the horse riding in the afternoon and he had a new, rather fancy Lego set to put together as well, which kept him busy in the morning.

Deep in concentration with his Lego.

For Katie, the Eventer Trial was a first, and quite exhausting with with 9 show jumps immediately followed by 13 cross country jumps. All bar two horses spent a lot of time spooking along one side of the course mainly because the wind was blowing the trees. Once they got over their fears of "nasties in the bushes", they flew round the jumps and everyone did well. We were all over the moon that Katie came 2nd in her under 16s section, especially as Icy seemed particularly spooky at one point and we thought it would affect her time.




Remember when film processing companies would put annoying stickers on photos with hints like, in this case, "missing face - make sure everything is inside the frame"? I could kick myself for not checking before pressing the button - this would have been a beautiful picture.


Icy - looking an absolute darling.

To celebrate Ben's big day we headed for Pizza Hut afterwards and then home to wait for visitors who were staying the night. We were all completely shattered!

Today we remembered to light the candles on Ben's cake (we were all too tired for cake the night before). I'd baked it Monday morning and then covered it with a tea-towel to cool off. When I came to decorate it around tea time I discovered a cat had gone and sat on one layer - it had been completely squashed through the cooling rack! 7 pm and I needed to bake a new layer with (luckily) the last two eggs in the fridge but (horror) no baking margarine. Having had a particularly busy day on Monday anyway, I was in no mood for this at all! Dear Paul went out to the shops (1/2 hour drive) to pick up some more, along with fish and chips (good lad). Re-baked, assembled with dainty "Happy Birthday" icing on it and 10 candles all ready for Tuesday and then I went and dropped it - doh! I figured the "3 second rule" would just have to work on this occasion - all was fine in the end (as it often is).