The Baynhams

Today was such a fun day. It started with a text from a friend suggesting Fish and Chips at a local park. I knew it was my last work-free day of the kids school holidays and I was aware that there were some friends the kids hadn't managed to meet up with yet so I asked Julie if I could pass the invite out to some other friends too. Her text response "Yeah the more the merrier!!!" was the start of something big...

I sent an email out to mums of kids that were connected through school and sports and encouraged them to spread the word. The replies came in quickly over the next few hours with lots of people excited to catch up. The weather forecast was for rain showers and I hoped it was wrong. I woke last night to heavy heavy rain on the window and lay tossing and turning wondering what we could do as a Plan B if the wet weather continued.

I shouldn't have worried. As the morning progressed the grey thinned out, the rain was gone and the smallest glimmer of sunshine pushed through the clouds. Text messages beeped constantly on my phone checking we were still meeting and then at 1pm we pulled up in the car-park, hot chips and calamari rings in take away boxes and picnic-rug and chairs in the boot.

Over the next hour the group grew and grew as more and more mums arrived and set up their chairs and passed around food and the kids whizzed back and forth in a blur only stopping for a drink here, a cup-cake there. Mostly we were Mums but we had one Dad sitting back and soaking up the sunshine too. At one point Monica decided to count how many of us had come. We lost count a few times but the end result as the blog title suggests was approximately 15 Mums, 41 kids and of course David!

Getting a group photo was Monica's idea and it took a lot of co-ordinating to get our kids to gather in one place. I ran around trying to round them up with promises of a big multi-pack of chips to be shared out afterwards but that only seemed to encourage kids we didn't know offering to join in the photo too! Eventually they gathered around the big tree. Some were climbing high in the branches but all of them were there somewhere as the mums yelled "Cheese!"