Chooks, Chocolate Cake and Chillin'

Yesterday F and I set off to go see Cuz and Cuz-in-law (who is also a good YIM mate, HH, who I bumped into on the Internet) and their fine chooks. J had been feeling more and more ill all week with hayfever and a bad back, so I wasn't surprised when he decided not to come.
This is the first time I have gone anywhere with my rucksack and the car booster seat without J (until a few months ago, the buggy took care of everything!), but the new rucksack is really comfy and the bag I had the booster seat in was just right, and it felt like something F and I will be able to do more of, which is great because it allows for taxi use as another transport option, etc.

The weather was dithering on the brink of drizzle as we set off and when we changed trains at Haywards Heath it was freezing and blowing a gale. Extraordinarily the weather in Cuzville was beautiful, proper spring, bordering on summer. It was lovely to see HH and my Cuz (have seen HH here quite a few times in last year, but haven't seen Cuz since before F), who made us very welcome. It was nice to catch up on family chat a bit with Cuz, and F was mainly good, if extremely over-excited, but did have at least one huge strop to do with where it is appropriate to put pants on (*rolls eyes parentally and sighs*) or not...
However, let's not dwell on that - she enjoyed seeing the chickens HH keeps - two enormous ones and two little bantams, all looking very healthy and beautiful and quite characterful. We were able to stroke the biggest gold-coloured one, who seemed extremely intelligent/curious and was very friendly. F also played with some Disney Princess ink stamps, provided by HH, and some bead-threading (though a minor strop nearly escalated there, to do with where the knot should go!). Her calmest moment was when she laid about a hundred tiny little wooden bugs and butterflies out on their stool very carefully, looking at them all, just after HH and I had been deriding the quality of this particular craft supply item - say what you like about them, the little wooden badly-designed things kept F very happily (and quietly) occupied for quite a while. She does really like looking at collections of things, with similarities and differences to notice. We had a lovely lunch and some vegan chocolate cake, which F had helped to stir, and also came away with 5 completely organic free-range eggs for F to eat, as she's never really had them. Long time since I cooked an egg - hope I will do them justice

Cuz gave us a lift back and F seemed to decide the journey was some kind of space/sea adventure, where space pirates had to be watched out for. Dozy Mog was in charge of the compass, I had a map (piece of slightly chewed gold card), Cuz was the captain/pilot and HH was responsible for spotting an island with treasure on. This game lasted the whole journey. We were back in plenty of time for Dr Who and for pre-Dr Who prep, in terms of snackage etc. I really enjoyed this week's episode - I adore Sarah-Jane! Glad to see she didn't get edited out too much as rumoured. As for K-9, no thanks. Anthony Head is always good value though. Good episode on the whole. I am starting to wish we could see a 4-parter or something like that though.

In the evening, I watched the Apprentice, which I have become sort of interested in, without actually caring much who wins, as I wanted to see Syed and Ruth in the boardroom, and to see how badly he worked on the cruise task. That was fun! The rest of the evening passed in just relaxing and doing bits and bobs of things that don't really amount to anything much.

This morning, F woke me just after half eight, but she hadn't woken me during the night at all for the first time in about 10 days I think, so biiiiiiiig woo and very hoo and thanks to HH for providing the excitement! On our arrival downstairs, after an initial small-scale strop about something and nothing, she immediately launched into a Barbie film fest, which included The Princess and the Pauper, Swan Lake, Nutcracker and Rapunzel!
Some of the afternoon was nice enough to have the back open and she was out in the garden, again watching next-door building their garage roof terrace and talking with J about building things. She is quite keen to have some kind of den house out there - we might look at options for her birthday.
Later we all watched The Empire Strikes Back - F bounced around in the middle bit, ignoring it, but then got involved again by the end, and then Top of the Tops and ate various nice foods including more of HH's chocolate cake, strawberries, raspberries and ice-cream at various points.
Just before bed she had a quick look at Education City with me and quite enjoyed that, after a long time of not having seen it.
Next week we have my mum on Tuesday, Katya, Ria and Belle on Wednesday and MonsterTeenies on Friday. Plus a few little things too.