Vintage has started

LiAM came in to my room very early and was coughing a lot and not able to catch his breath. I gave him some ventolin and he settled down on the couch and went back to sleep for most of the morning - I think he'd been awake for a while before he came to me. He's been on only one preventer for most of January - if he misses it though it's only a few hours before he is wheezing, and he had taken it the night before this attack - so we've decided to go back to the 2 preventers and hopefully that will settle things down. A month off the puffer though is more than his body has managed before - so each year he seems a little stronger.

Tony didn't get home from work until after 7, he had some breakfast (or is that dinner?) and went to bed. So Vintage has definitely started and I don't feel quite as ready for it as I thought I would be! The girls slept for another couple of hours so I had a bit of time to myself to check emails and then do a bit of housework and then I jumped in a deep hot bath and read my book (Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee - very very well written, I read it quickly and easily and loved it). It was really lovely to have a very relaxing morning on my own.

Once Millie was up we played some games then she played Minecraft. When she is naming her worlds or skins now she types in the first letter of the name and then asks me to write the rest. She read the title of a couple of books that we were looking at too, she's figured out a few words that I didn't realise she knew.

When LiAM woke up he felt better although still wanted to stay lying down, so he put the tv on and watched for a while as well as playing his monster game on the iPod. He and Millie connected for a while in Minecraft as well. Caitlin helped me with the chickens and I discovered some female flowers in my pumpkin patch so attempted to hand-pollinate them, hopefully it will work this time and we will end up with some pumpkins from the massive plants that are filling my garden.

I made pancakes for lunch - they tasted better and flipped better than last time, although I did forget to put the egg in, which would have made them even better. Caitlin went to Yarra Glen park with a friend, and the other kids and I hung out and watched tv and chatted about spies and superheroes.

Tony was potentially going to have to go in to work again on the Saturday evening, around 2pm he found out that he didn't have to go, which meant we were able to go to our friends' house for dinner as planned. They have recently moved to Hurstbridge and we've been talking about getting together for a meal for ages, so we were all pleased that we didn't have to cancel or postpone. We got there around 5.30 and the kids played in the huge backyard and huge playroom, played with their pet blue-tongue lizard, played dress ups and lego and with the billy-cart and built a very cool lean-to cubby. We had delicious pulled-pork rolls for tea, and lots of fantastic conversation with our friends. We didn't leave until after 11, and it was absolutely pouring rain when I decided it was time to leave. We waited a bit until it was a little lighter, and I drove home through rain all the way - I was worried about driving through Christmas Hills in a storm, if it got windy there could be trees and branches blowing everywhere - but it was fine, just rain and we made it home easily and fed the animals and bundled everyone quickly into bed.