Ok, so the rhyme goes:

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

(yes, ok I looked it up and yes there is more to it, but I can't be bothered with the rest of the olde worlde English)

But for years I've always changed it to remember, remember the eighth of November!!! One obvious reason is it's my birthday, the other being that I usually am inundated with cards and gifts!
This year my two sisters and one of my brother in laws (the official one not unofficial one) came over for dinner and then we set out for Caerphilly to watch the fireworks. Before I get onto that saga though, I should really show you the gifts Liz (my elder sister) made for me and Dus (his birthday was in April).


She crocheted him a Viking helmet! Hurrah!

Apparently at Christmas last year I asked for a tea cosie for my birthday, which is all too likely as we do like to use a proper teapot if there's more than two of us and it gets cold otherwise! As I'm typing this I realise that Liz actually said yes to having a cup of tea on Saturday and I forgot to make her one! Ooops!
Anyway, so Liz crocheted me a tea cosie for my birthday!


A tea cosie in the shape of a chicken I must add!


Look at the work that's gone into that. *marvels*

So, Saturday, we'd eaten our dinner, applied copious amounts of woolly hats, scarves and gloves and piled into the cars to head to the fireworks display at Caerphilly. At 18:47 while we were still sitting 2 miles outside of Caerphilly in a mahousive queue, we realised we might not actually make it. According to powerful eyewitness records (Stacey & Helen who had gotten there) the fireworks only went on for half an hour so by the time we'd gotten there and parked, I don't think we'd have seen much of it anyway!

So we decided to turn around at the next opportunity (approx 18:58) at the roundabout and head
back to our house to have ourselves a little party. I'd mentioned to Amanda that we didn't have any sweeties but we could just raid the cupboard for what we could find and headed on home.

On the way myself and Dusband decided to stop off for some sweets and treats and bought quite a few just in case anyone else called in. When Amanda and Matt and Liz arrived they had also stopped for sweets and treats! The coffee table wasn't quite groaning with the weight of them, cos sweets don't weigh that much really do they, but it was laden and we barely had room for the tealights we were toasting our marshmallows over! They'd also bought some tiny indoor sparklers so we took advantage of it being firework weekend to write various mumbo jumbo in the sky. Dusband was concentrating so hard on writing 'Samantha's birthday' he almost sparkled right into Matt's ear!

That night I woke up in the night with a dreaded case of RAZOOOOOOOR THROAT! Imagine that being said in like a gladiators commentator type voice with a lot of hype and excitement. I was up a couple of hours feeling as illasaurus as ill can be (or baard as they might say in Wales) and then went back to sleep. I spent most of the day on the sofa as everytime I stood up my head was swimming and I thought I'd go divebombing head first into the floor or something strange like that!
I managed to get me into the shower about 4pm though and by the time it came to leave for church I was a lot better and could talk and everything! Amazing what God can do when He wants you to go to church. (I also love going to church so I was glad about that, it's the highlight of my week)

I managed well during the service and even had enough voice to sing and do the announcements! The microphone helped with the announcements I must admit but the singing was all me.

Ok, so Monday then I woke up again early doors with razor throat and struggled to the medicine cabinet for some evil juice of health makingness (Beechams cold and flu remedy) and back to bed for a couple of hours. Dusband got up about 6 but by that time I was just drifting off into a medicine induced couple of hours of sleep and when I finally awoke at 8:34am, it was officially my birthday! Hurrah!

I stumbled downstairs (stumbling's kind of a given with our stairs) to be greeted with the fruit of Dus' labour all morning.....


Trying to not trip over the balloons I made my way through the living room to the dining room to the fridge to get some juice for my poor scritchy throat and in the fridge I found a parcel all wrapped up nicely with a clue on the top!
I followed the clue and came to another pressie with a clue. This continued for a good 4 - 6 minutes until I'd uncovered quite a few nicely wrapped pressies. I was glad that Dusband hadn't been able to buy me more presents as I was getting exhausted by that time and really wasn't feeling well enough for more present hunting!

Breakfast followed by present opening followed by a severe state of shock that none of my family had bought me any silly presents.....until I remembered I'd not had anything from Dad yet...he's always guaranteed to give me a nice good useless silly present. So far, the only thing that'd come close to silly presents was from Dale & Helen and was a stuffed teddy bee! Ha, ha, very funny you guys......

Then I had to spend the morning making recycled bookpage flower corsage thingys as a customer had bought 18 of them over the weekend and they're all made by hand and took me up until about 4pm when I had to run them down the post office to ensure they got to her within my specified 1 business day delivery timescale! Why, oh why didn't I think to put the shop onto holiday settings that weekend.....I just can't even imagine!

Anyway, after that I wrote the quiz for the Christians Together 8pm Monday night Quiz! A quick dinner (thanks Dus!) and then online to host the quiz!

All in all, although I'm still feeling rotten now and not quite 100%, a birthday's a birthday and I'm sure I will get a chance to rest some point this week...maybe Friday...?

Oh yes! Also, I almost forgot, Dad's parcel containing my birthday joy arrived late afternoon and I opened it during dinner, but all it contained were some very useful, thoughtful gardening themed gifts! What is going on with the world where you can't even rely on your own father for a useless gift?! *Shakes head*.
In a way it's nice to not have to try and decide what to do with the useless silly gift, but it's a shock.....27 years of silly presents kinda makes you come to expect them on the 28th year.

Anyway, back to the grindstone as I've started making people's Christmas pressies (I've been talking about starting making them for so long I thought I'd better actually make some headway now Ebay has a daily countdown!) and it's Bible study tonight at church. I'd best dose myself up, apply a few extra layers of clothing and try not to cough and splutter all over anyone!

xx