After looking forward to Center Parcs for so long, it is now all over...
We had a great time, in our Exclusive Villa - complete with hot tub, sauna and steam room!! It's a hard life!
Friday - The journey to Longleat was bad - well the traffic was bad, but we had great views of Stonehenge and Putin say's he saw a unicorn too! When we arrived we were allowed straight into our Villa, and I can say, once you've done Executive, you won't want to go back!! The Limpets and Poes arrived about half an hour after us, and then we wandered down to get some food...at the Pancake House. It was gorgeous weather, so we sat outside and ate our Jacket Potatoes and Pancakes. I think the excitment got to me, Lou and Noo as we sang the theme to James the Cat, substituting the lyrics with Dave the Tank!! I was crying with laughter!
Then back at the villa we decided to give the hot tub a whirl - it was soooo nice! Champagne, bubbles, gorgeous weather...what more could you want!!
After relaxing in the hot tub (with some Greco Roman wrestling from Po and Putin) we got ready to go out for the evening...10 pin bowling!
Now, I am usually rubbish at this...but I won the first game (the girls had a lane and the boys had one...I didn't beat the boys though!). Sadly we didn't get to finish the sencond game...sadly as I'd got a spare on my first bowl and then 2 strikes in a row on my 3rd and 4th bowls...and I never got to find out what would have happened!! Aaaargh!! After this it was off to Huckleberry's for dinner before heading back to the villa.
Saturday - No lie-ins for us!! The girls were up and out and at Aqua Sana for 9am!! We had booked a Aqua Sana Spa session (3 hours in various steam rooms, saunas and relaxation rooms), but little did I know that my birthday pressie was at the spa too...I had an Exotic Frangipani Body Nourish Wrap - oooh eeer! It was a complete suprise..I had no idea...and it was brilliant, so thanks guys!!! Basically (from what I can recall, as I wa soooo relaxed!!) Frangipani oil is poured our you, a bit at a time obviously, and massaged in (which feels gorgeous!) and then you are wrapped up in foil (like a baked potato!) while you have a mini facial, with more Frangipani on your face, hair and neck. Then you have a shower and then lots of lovely moisturiser is massaged in too. I felt very relaxed afterwards! Bliss!! (While I had this Lou did too and Noo and Joey had facials.) We all met up in the relaxation room before having our Spa session, trying out almost all the steam rooms and saunas and then having lunch in the Conservatory (feeling very 'my body is a temple' and having healthy salads and jacket potatoes!)
After all the relaxing, Lou and I decided to meet the boys in the pool and go on the rapids and flumes! So, aiming to suprise them, we snuck in and went in search, going on flumes and the rapids as we went. After about 45 mins of sneaking about, keeping our eyes peeled and being detective like we decided they weren't there and headed off...only to discover that text messages are pants and we arrived as they were leaving the pool!! All our sleuthing for nothing!!
In the evening we had a BBQ and did pressies for the birthday boys. Without going into too much detail the evening consisted of...cider (8 pints from the farmers market), red wine, champagne, bagpiping, party-boy-shake-your-arse dancing, body-pump dancing (as taught by Joey), reggae muffin Lou, the Feeders dance, more cider and champage, hot tub, duck vader aka EVIL DUCKY!!! I went to bed at about 12.30am (feeling like a saltana) leaving Po, DL and Lou still in the hot tub - becoming saltanas - especially as they then went into the sauna!!
Sunday - With dodgy tummies and no chance of a lie-in it was time for the zip-wire and cake-
off!! DL, Noo, Lou, Chudders and I were doing the zip-wire, while Joey and Po had a cake-off with Putin as referee and cameraman! The zip-wire turned out to be a pretty good hangover cure, and woke me up nicely!! It was tamer then the 3G swing we did last year (we really wnated to do the high ropes but again, it was fully booked...and ended up cancelled on the Sunday anyway!) Still it was good fun! (The photo is Noo zip-wiring)
On our return to the villa, the cake off was all over, with Po's cake cooking and Joey's cooling on the side. We then had some chilling out time, with the guys watching 'Demonic Toys' (a pressie for Putin.)
Archery was in the afternoon. This is the bit I didn't really enjoy...I would have liked it more if I didn't have such knobbly elbows that got in the way. After the string hitting my elbow 3 times in a row (Ouch! See massive painful bruise piccy!!) I decided I wasn't keen! (Doing it left handed (as I was told I was left eye dominant - but at clay pigion shooting I was told right eye dominant! Who knows?!?) didn't help as I felt kack-handed) I think I was the only one to score zero...although I almost got 3 pints, one on someone elses target!! At least I didn't catch myself where Joey did...OUCH!!!!!) On a good note, Putin did well and won! Hurrah for Putin!
After this, the boys, Lou and I went to the pool....more playing on the rapids and flumes and generally being big kids!! We then met Noo and Joey for dinner (at Huckleberrys again) where I had a lovely CHILLI!!)
Back at the Villa we played the 80's tunes game. We were in teams of 2 (the boys names were drawn out) and I was with Po. We had an unbelievably easy first round (passing into the middle zone!) and ended up winning the game!! Hurrah!! We then settled down to watch Feeders 2 - probably THE worst ever film EVER - Feeders (the aliens) seemed to be made with potatoes for heads, bottle tops for eyes and twigs for arms...also the sound effect fart was unbelievable!! If you want to see a film where Santa shoots spindly-legged, potato-headed, gibbering, dancing aliens with a ray gun - see this!! (Also the mother acting was soooo wooden I think she was previously a tree!)
Monday - After packing everything up we waved goodbye to the Limpets and Poes while the Putin's, CP and myself went to the pool...again...just because we could!! We were the first ones on the rapids and had our first run all to ourselves! Brilliant! We went on the flumes and rapids and in the hot tub (not as good as the one at the villa!) before calling it a day and decideding lunch was needed before heading home (especailly if the traffic was as bad as on Friday.) So to the Pancake House again for a final feed before heading home.
A GREAT weekend!! Same again next year?!?!?!?!
Yesterday Carl and I drove 'home' to see my family. We were amazed at what the bunglehouse looks like now!! It has a wet room (shower facility my dad can use), a ramp to the front door, the central heating is nearly complete and they've done a lot of the fencing (with my brother's help!) The garden still needs turfing, but it is really beginning to look like their place now. After lunch we wandered down to Paul and Sarah's to babysit while Sarah went to look at a flat with Liz. Joshua has grown...more and has a cheesey grin he shows every now and then. We had fun playing with his toys and keeping him occupied - he has such a personality now! 
We'd only just got out of Potton and past Sutton when we spotted a baby deer sitting in the other lane. Carl thought it was dead, but I didn't, so we went back. The deer was alive, but in shock, so unable to just leave it (it would have been run over as it was on a bend) Carl flashed the car lights and clapped at it in an attempt to make it move but it wouldn't so we wrapped it in Carl's coat and put him in the boot, drove back to my parents and called the RSPCA. After a cup of tea, a lovely lady called Kate arrived and peered into the boot. She said we'd done all the right things, but as it was now moving about we'd try and let it back into the wild. We discoved it was a Monkjack Deer, and was probably clipped by a car or run over (so the deer was under the car but not squashed) so it was in shock. We went back to where we found it and managed to release it back into the wild, where it pranced off. Sadly the photo was a bit rubbish, but I din't want to scare it more by using the flash! We decided to name the deer Deirdre!!
