Farewell and Birthday Celebrations

Last weekend, Seth, Caleb and I headed to Norwich. It was my niece, Jess's last weekend at home before leaving on the Monday for her mission and she was having a farewell shindig on the Saturday night. We kind of crashed it (actually, my sister Lin offered) and turned it into a joint thing to celebrate Caleb's birthday as well. I was really pleased when she suggested it as the thought had crossed my mind that it would be lovely to celebrate his Birthday being as though all of the family would be together in the one place! It meant celebrating his Birthday a week earlier but I was fairly sure that he wouldn't mind too much.

The family get together wasn't until Saturday evening so Mum, Laura, Seth, Caleb and I played in the daytime. It was another gorgeous day (I am loving the hot weather that we have been blessed with recently! Not loving the permanent glowing quite so much though!) and so we decided to go to Wroxham Barns. It's a lovely place with various craft shops, gift shops and cafes.

 

 

 

 

 

We just wandered around the shops, ate ice cream (which Caleb loved!) and played in the park. When I say that we played, you may well think that I mean we played with Caleb in the park but no, we were mainly playing ourselves. We're real grown ups like that. We attempted pull ups on the pull up bars, which Seth could do with no problems at all; for Laura and I it was a bit of a failure! I did however manage to do a forward roll on the bar though so I was happy with that. It may have taken a couple of attempts but I did get a round of applause from people at the nearby picnic bench which made it all worthwhile!

 

  

 

 

We also had races on the swings. I think Seth won that as well. Lest you think we left Caleb out completely, he also had his turn on the swings and loved it. It always takes him a while to get used to it but once he gets into it, he loves it.

 

We headed over to Lin's in the evening for the family gathering. It was so lovely to have everyone there, including my nephew Jamie and his new wife, Lauren. She's a lovely girl and she fits in perfectly with the family. Although Jess loved having all of the family together, she didn't really like the attention and kept a fairly low profile, unlike Caleb who was loving all of the attention! He was given some lovely presents from everyone, he's a very lucky boy! The evening consisted of lots of food, chatting and playing, it was a lot of fun being with everyone, as it always is!

 

A lovely picture of all the family, even if it is a bit blurry!

On Sunday at church, Jess gave a talk in the church meeting on why she had decided to serve a mission. As I looked at her, it seemed hard to believe that she was the little girl who we used to look after and run around after, she is a proper grown up now! It seems strange that I won't see her for 18 months, although there will be letters and emails but our loss is definitely Salt Lake City's gain.