Just time for a final post of 2013 before I tuck in to my New Year’s Eve lamb noisettes and dauphinoise potatoes…

We’ve ended 2013 with two lovely days filled with old and new friends.  Yesterday, we did another road trip over to Southend-on-Sea to visit my uni friend Kate and her family in their new house by the seaside.  It was a long and dreary drive, but the clouds cleared when the children saw Kate’s amazing playroom.  Cue hours of fun playing with little Tom’s brilliant toys:

Following a delicious lunch of homemade pizza, we braved the wind and cold for a quick trip to the seaside (well, we couldn’t travel all that way and not step on the sand!). We lasted about five minutes, but we got to see the sea, write our names in the sand and run around a lot!

And best of all, Kate managed to get a rare family photo of all four of us. We, of course, didn’t manage to get the children to look at the camera – who knows what’s so interesting on the floor! But there we all are:

We then headed back to Herne Hill for a playdate with some of our newest friends – Caroline and Dave and their children Sam and Una. Sam is Alex’s “best friend” from his childminder, and Una is Sophie’s age. We spent a lovely hour watching the children play with pretty much every toy in Sam’s collection – and then a long half an hour packing it all up!!

I have no photographic evidence of how lovely the last day of 2013 was – we were having too much fun! We spent the morning over in Brixton having a very splashy family swim and trip to the market where the children consumed vast quantities of Colombian food (they are so much more cosmopolitan than I was at their age!).

After some chill out time at home, our friends Catherine and Charlie arrived from Zurich with Phoebe and Henry. Having not seen them for 6 months we had a lot to catch up on! And the children slotted back into their old friendships and were soon running riot around the house! They were soon joined by their friends Charlie and Danny for even more raucous play. All six children were scarlet with excitement and exhaustion by the end of the day – but it was the perfect end to the year.

My champagne beckons – hope you all have wonderful New Year’s.  See you in 2014!

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