September Sunshine

There is no light quite as good as September sunshine, is there? Golden and low, hitting the trees at a perfect angle to show them off. I love this time of year.
Yesterday we had N, D and S over (the MTs). It was a lovely relaxed visit - the kids all pretty much ignored each other for the first half (which always seems very healthy to me!), then played on the Wii all together very happily for the last half. No upsets or quarrels at all. About an hour before they came I had suggested that F make wrapping paper for a prezzy for D for his birthday and she had decided not to - I generally don't 'push' her to make cards etc. for friends, she does it if she wants to. When I saw their car coming into the road, I called out to her, oh they're here and she suddenly decided to make a card for D. And she did it in 2 minutes, with lots of gold glitter to make a gold dalek - and it came with a free sound effect to (to drive N mad!).
F is very generous - the sound effect, for example, is the kind of thing a lot of children would want to hang on to (little box that says 'Exterminate' when pressed), plus she had no problem with D and S going on the trampoline even though she is unable to at the moment, due to healing arm. It's something that I'm so used to, with her, that I often don't fully appreciate it, but she is generally a very generous child and I love that about her.
Anyway, yes, a lovely visit, N and I seemed to have loads of time to chat, with very little botheration. If she hadn't been driving I think we could happily have drunk wine in the afternoon, since we were needed so little! We contented ourselves with turkish delight, tea, pasta pesto and sitting outside.
After they left, I gave F a quick tour of the newly tidied craft resources. On Thursday I did a really big living-room tidy, which I'm really pleased with. Lots of designating areas for this, that and the other - it's so much easier to tidy now that we actually seem to have enough storage furniture. A bit like how I always used to wonder why I could never be up to date with the bills - it was because my income didn't actually cover them, but it took me 2 years to get to the point of actually calculating that!
So, one big unit in the living room now houses craft stuff on top shelf, with some books, comics and toys on bottom shelf. I showed F all the various kits and other items that were in the craft bit and she immediately decided to do a kit that involved painting an alarm clock. So she started that and J came home soon after, just as she was having a meltdown of artistic temperament about the paint 'dribbling' down the side of the clock and spoiling her efforts. I was a bit stressed and J is the artist in the family so was able to calm her down and talk about it, show her how to deal with it, etc. while I went and started to cook myself a de-stressing dinner (big pan of garlicky dahl, with onion, leek, chilli and creamed coconut in), as J was going out for the evening.
F and I spent the evening snuggling and watching films, settling on 101 Dalmations after a couple of tries with newer films. F had a very late night and I had a very early night at the same time.
We're very commitment-free at the moment - I haven't signed F up for anything and am quite glad of it really. I have some ideas for places to go and things to do over the next few months and I want some spontaneity available to us right now.