They allow us to have children:

Alison had another football match.

The girls celebrated Red Nose Day at school. Every class had a

different theme – in year 2 they were supposed to wear red and

black and in Year 5 the girls dressed as boys and the boys as

girls, so for Ali it was jeans and a T-shirt.

They even wore their noses and deeley boppers. It's just a fun

thing they do here in the UK and it's a good excuse for a mufty

day (non-uniform day).

Claire and Clay came to visit and I got to take their engagement

pictures.

We went to Kew Gardens and the Magnolia trees were in full bloom.

While they were here, we went to the Roald Dahl museum in

Great Missenden where he lived. The Chocolate Factory gates

were near the entrance.

Alison tried to eat the Chocolate doors.

We all checked to see which characters we measured up to. You

can't really tell by the angel in this picture, but Zuzu was right in

between "Charlie" and "James", Alison was the same height as

“Danny”, Claire was “A Human Sized Duck”, I was “Miss Honey”

and Daddy was “Mr Twit”.

The girls made magnetic rhymes and silly sentences.

I would have loved to have taken these girls to "Matilda" on broadway, but it didn't work out. Hopefully we'll be going soon.

Roald Dahl was sort of a strange guy. For many years he kept the exact same schedule every day -waking at the same time, eating breakfast and walking to his little windowless cabin in his back garden, where he created his optimum writing environment and write for 4 hours each day. He had a heater hanging from the ceiling and kept his legs in a sleeping bag, propping his feet up on a suitcase which was nailed to the floor. Had a special brush to remove pencil shavings from the writing surface and only used Ticonderoga pencils (they imported them special and sold them in the gift shop). Like I said, strange dude.

There was even a replica of his Writing Chair from his writing cabin, complete with custom cutout for his lower back, a special shaped board, with green felt cover, with a rolled up piece of cardboard for propping purposes. We all agreed that it was not very comfortable.