We were invaded again

by the six children, their mother and their grandparents. It was good. I am still recovering.
When they did not come last week I froze the pumpkin soup. Yesterday morning I defrosted it and added more stock to bring it up to a soup like consistency. There were (almost) two loaves of 'pizza bread' waiting. There were chocolate biscuits and custard cream type biscuits, bananas and mandarins. It has to be party sort of food when they are here but I also need to be sure that they eat well - after all, a day with us is a sort of party day.
The 'almost' two loaves of pizza bread is because someone else had to sample it the day before - along with his mate Neville and my godfather. That's fine. It is not hard to make. You buy the cheapest sort of white bread from the supermarket - the sort of icky, stick to the roof your mouth white bread that has no other place at all in a balanced diet. You put the merest scraping of decent margarine sort of spread across the top. It needs to be barely there. You add grated cheese in good measure (buy it pre-grated to save time if you must). Then you can add other things...bacon if you want to eat meat, a little dried tomato or olive slices work fine...but you really just need the cheese and then sprinkle with pizza topper herbs bought in the spice section of the supermarket. Shove on trays in the oven and leave at about 100-125'C until cooked - how much cooked depends on the impatience of those waiting. It can take a while if you let them crisp to an almost rusk like state. If you do this there will be crumbs everywhere - but does that matter?
There was the obligatory time in the shed. Bookends were finished. Pencil cases were finished.
The youngest made amazing architectural works with the large set of coloured blocks my father made years ago. The boys made equally amazing structures from Meccano as they waited their turn in the shed. They want to know - what can we make next?
We will see them once more before they leave for Manila. Then it will be a long wait - three months while they are there and then their quarantine time back here....quarantine to protect my father who is too old to get some tropical disease. I hope they do not get any either.
I know my father will soon be too old to handle such invasions but he loves children - after all he is just a grown up child himself.