Refreshing weekend

If I was a Sim, all my needs indicators would be green and healthy right now.
Friday:
We went and saw another house at lunchtime, which had some of the features we're looking for but some offputting ones too. Anyone is welcome to look at my house-hunting blog.
Other than that it was a quiet homey day which involved F and I having a lot of nice snuggles, chats and laughs as well as doing our own thing separately for some of the day. J brought Animal Crossing (plus a few other games) home from a friend and she seems quite keen on that despite the heavy text content. I would like to have a look at Harvest Moon.
Some pinata fiddling also took place in several gardens including growing cash crops of Bird of Paradise flowers.
At some point we had a conversation where F asked me how babies get out of their mummies and pointed out to me that mummies don't have doors or gates or things like that. So I told her (she already knows something about how the babies get into the mummies and I knew this was coming up as she did wonder about it about 6 months ago) that babies come out of the mummies 'noonies' (I know I know but 'fanny' can cause confusion with American slang and I don't much like the other words). So then she said 'but noonies are small and babies are bigger', so I said noonies get big for the baby to go out. And that was that for now.
In the evening J and I had curry and watched the Green Wing special, which had some excellent moments in it, although not quite the same feel as the better episodes. They are probably right to finish it there. Was an enjoyable relaxing evening.

Saturday:
Took F off early to drama, where she had a good time as usual. I was slightly disappointed to find that the music/movement bit taken by the other woman continues this term. She just doesn't grab their attention, especially those whose attention is not easily grabbed, in which group I do include my daughter. But that's only the last half hour or so, the first hour is excellent. I think when they go into the next age group, they are allowed to just do the first bit of the session, or rather the music is a separate session that you pay for separately.
So, yes, she enjoyed that - I did 40 mins shopping and 40 mins reading while waiting. Then had a mad rush to get taxi home, drop F and shopping off, kiss J hello/goodbye and get back in taxi to go to a 5-hour writing workshop, which was wonderful. We were focusing on writing from visual stimuli, so had some images to work from and play with. We stopped for lunch and a natter in the middle and I just felt so lucky to be doing this and enjoying it so much.
When I got home J and F were out with Grandpa C, gone to check out an area in which house prices are a bit lower - a successful mission, the area looked fine. They arrived back after I'd been home 40 mins or so. J's dad stayed a short while then was off.
J went out to see a friend over the other side of town and F and I played Shrek Super Party together which was really fun - seem to remember the Puddle Patchers got into that quite a while ago. Then I let her stay up late watching films and DSing next to me on the sofa, asking me what bits of Animal Crossing said, and chatting about films and telly, etc. We had a very nice evening. She normally will konk out not long after ten (lately she has been reappearing quite a lot after bedtime - one night she asked me to tuck her in again so I said 'F, I've already tucked you in once' and she replied 'I know, but I tucked me out again'). This time she was determined and managed to stay up past midnight to when J came back. She didn't get whingy, just nice and snuggly, thank goodness, with a snack at some unlikely hour.

Sunday:
Today we got up fairly late, gone 10, and mooched around for a while. I played Shrek Super Party again with F and she played it by herself a bit too.
We went out for a late afternoon walk, which was really glorious in the sunshine (at last, all this grey drizzle!). Up the back and round and down, we saw rabbits, llamas, sheep, cows, horses and ponies. One llama was utterly unlike her friends, prancing about, curiously approaching passing humans and generally looking like the genius of the llama world. We decided she was stuck in a blue cow type scenario where she knew there was a whole universe of experience out there and had a head full of philosophy and hypotheses, but she was surrounded by the other llamas who would just say things like 'I just ate some grass. I might eat some more in a minute. It tastes grassy today.'
We encountered a white pony which allowed me to stroke its head a bit before getting just frisky enough for me to want to get out of the field and move on.
It was a lovely walk, some gorgeous views (J and I were checking houses out when we looked down on the town side) and generally just pleasure at being out in sunshine and fresh air with no drizzle. F did a lot of grabbing each of us and declaring love and tried to interest various animals in handfuls of grass. J tried out his new camera.
Back here, relaxing, playing with pinatas and I had a bath before J cooked really good pasta dish.

I have wine. And no work.