Cousins!

In the picture: Dad, Mum, Otoshi, Masae, Maree, John. Mum, Masae and John share common ancestry :)

WOW what a day. It threatened to start at 6.30am again. I was having none of it and persuaded the boys to snooze until 8am, thus shooting myself in the foot a little as we needed to breakfast and get back to mum and dad's fairly early!

Still, we managed. I even managed to do the breakfast washing up and cleaned up the minor disastor Ben had with his cereal! Ohh breakfast. Ben asked for cereal. I gave him some mini wheats. I assumed Charley would want some of my strawberries and porridge. Ben ended up having most of a banana and half my porridge; Charley didn't want strawberries, banana OR porridge; I had half my porridge, Charley's strawberries and Ben's mini wheats, and Charley tore into my toast once that popped up instead. All change. Gotta roll with it at breakfast, evidently!

Arrived at mum and dad's just as Dad arrived back from collecting Masae-san and Otoshi-san from their hotel in Manchester. Masae is mum's cousin: they share a great-grandmother. Ben went shy again and disappeared off to watch Happy Feet again, even John couldn't tempt him out of hiding! Amazing to sit and listen to the six of them chattering away: Australians, Japanese, English, all with a common ancestry, sharing photographs and stories, filling in blanks on family trees.

Time flew by, and we had to hurry into our glad rags and get out to the church for a wedding I'd not have wanted to miss for the world :) Am SO glad I was there to witness Andy and Hayley get married!! Bit of a rocky start to the service with an ambulance needing calling (the man is alright, but is being kept in hospital overnight just to make sure) but a beautiful service nonetheless.

Quite amazing to see so many childhood friends and acquaintances grown up now, with or expecting children; always blesses me that so many of my childhood Church remember and recognise me and ask after me too.

Home afterwards, bit of a puzzle wondering where my brother had got to, but he and Sue turned up eventually! So round the dinner table we had England, Scotland (by dint of ancestry), Japan, China and Australia represented. And all related by blood or marriage! Incredible!

Ben and Charley have done SO well today. Ben has made friends with everyone, and Charley decided he was going to accept being held by Masae while I made a cheese sauce for Ben. They were fairly quiet during the wedding, although we had to go and run along a few corridors! Charley fell asleep and missed out on scones afterwards, and Ben made me have more scones than I meant to (being unable to inject with Charley wrapped up) because he insisted some were cakes, and made me take the jam off so he could eat one. Which he didn't, so I had the jam-less scone he rejected, plus the plain scone I'd put the jam onto. Oh well... This evening Ben watched Happy Feet (again) with me while Charley fell asleep, but then Charley wouldn't settle either in the wrap or out so we packed up and headed back to Steve's parents' house after Ben said he wanted to go to bed. They've gone to sleep without any fuss and now I'm going to join them.

After I've found that twix bar I'm sure is in one of the bags....