Doh, forgot the camera ... again!

Had a great Hallowe'en party on Friday evening with HE and local children at the hall where Katie does her art. All the children and most of the adults dressed up and enjoyed nibbles, drinks, spooky games and a disco. P came along too and enjoyed himself - swinging Ben's mate around and around so much that I thought he would pass out through dizziness!

Played "wrap the mummy" (as in Egyptian Mummy) with teams of 4 children wrapping an adult up as neatly as possible in 3 mins. using cheap toilet rolls. We played this a few years ago at home during a Hallowe'en party and I remember saying "you use the bog roll to wrap around your partner" and a few of the children didn't know what bog roll was - so this time I was polite and said "toilet roll"! Great fun anyway, and loads of mess afterwards for snow ball fights and general sliding around on bits of tissue all over the floor.

Katie and Ben carved pumpkins and made pussy cat and pumpkin shaped biscuits for the evening (we sampled quite a few before we reached the venue). Unfortunately completely forgot the camera and haven't taken any pumpkin shots or whatever! Maybe next year I'll be more on the ball.

Car started to play up on the way down, just the occasional judder but by Friday evening it was misbehaving badly and actually quite scary to drive. We had headed off to the grandparents for grub and fireworks but decided to return and pick up our other car instead as the jumping and what have you was more-or-less stalling the car - we drove home slowely and will certainly not be taking it out again - it's time to put this baby to bed. An R reg which has done us proud for about 10 years - shall miss her.

Grub and fireworks was fun but extremely wet. We got home at 11 and sank into bed with a lovely lie in this morning before a day or car hunting! We set out with the idea of buying a smaller car mainly for P to use for all his work driving. We like the Focus and Golf and were looking mainly at these. We couldn't believe how good the prices were, even for 08 cars! We had found a big car showroom yesterday before grub and fireworks, which only allowed us to test drive (with the sales person in the car too - pretty tight squeeze as we had Katie and Ben in the back) on a 30 mile an hour small stretch of road which last about 5 mins tops! Today's car showroom, a little closer to home, let us drive 4 cars in total. Each was an absolute bliss to sample as we are so used to an older car with heavy pedals and gears - it was great fun. Each car seemed nicer than the previous and then we clocked a Picasso which wasn't anywhere on our list for even looking at! The price enticed us into the test drive seat and the "ooohs and arrrrs" just said it all really. The first Picasso was a 2ltr Petrol which would have been silly to buy really as our criteria was for a (small) 1.6 diesel, but upon our return the dealer had brought out a top of the range 1.6 diesel for us which was 6 months old and slightly cheaper still. It had dealer plates attached so we took it for a much longer spin - it was beautiful and we've placed our deposit down!

Coming home with full beams on our faces, I suddenly realised that all of our past cars have lasted us near on 10 years which'll mean Katie may be 21 and Ben 19 and me fast approaching 50 by the time (hopefully) this car will give up the ghost. Shock horror - I wonder what my children will be doing by then - we could even be ferrying around grandchildren!

Photos to follow - I promise.

Finally, a little plug for my friend's album which is available on itunes to purchase - "Out of the Ashes". Can't get the first two songs of the album out of my head - they are very catchy. Some are on the artist's MySpace so you can listen before you buy!