Storytelling Sunday - August

Where has the year gone?  How did we get to Storytelling Sunday for August?  I'm not quite sure what has happened to this year but I like the month of August the best :-)  Sometime during the first week of each month people from all over the world join Sian at From High In The Sky for Storytelling Sunday.  If you like a tale or two, to either read or write, then head on over and take a look.  I promise you won't be disappointed.

Sian suggested a theme this month of 'summer loving' and while I don't normally go with the theme, I thought a bit of summer would be nice.  You see, we are currently in the midst of winter.  One of the coldest and driest on record, and one of the worst flu seasons in a very long time.  I have had the flu for the past two weeks and today is the first day I have felt more like myself.  Some people are calling this year's flu the '100 day flu'!  I am glad my dose has only lasted a few weeks!!!!!!  I have a friend who is now into week six :-(

So here is a summer story which occurred during August a little while back ... A story of love :-)

I love August for one reason and one reason only ... it is the month of my birthday!  I have lived in both hemispheres and so my birthday has been celebrated in summer and in winter.  I like the summer birthdays the best.  On our first camping trip to France our summer holiday co-incided with my birthday.  The LOML, being the loving husband that he is, asked how we could celebrate my birthday while we were away.  We had a family car but with five of us, our tent, and supplies there wasn't a great deal of spare room.  I foolishly replied by telling him that we would just have to celebrate my birthday when we got home.  I didn't think that he would take me literally ... as in NO birthday at all!!!!  I meant don't pack presents, don't worry about a fancy cake, and those sorts of things.  I didn't mean to forget it all together!!!  The morning of my birthday I woke up to nothing ... no cards from the kids, no special meal, no treats ... just a greeting of "Happy Birthday" when I woke up.

I would say that it took The LOML about two hours to realise that he had made a SERIOUS mistake.  So he and the children scrambled to fix it somehow.  They went to the campsite deli but all the cakes were sold (I had dropped hints the day before as to which cake I liked best) and they organised dinner at the campsite restaurant.  Dinner would have been lovely but unfortunately I got food poisoning and really didn't feel great.  Needless to say it wasn't the high point of our holiday.

Fast forward two years and we are once again headed to France for our summer holiday.  We were going a little more upmarket this time and we had hired a cabin at a campsite instead of taking our tent.  And just like two years before we would be away for my birthday ... my 30th birthday!  No one asked me what they should do about my birthday, but I knew it would not be a repeat of the previous trip.  However I was not prepared for what they actually did.

I woke up to a delicious cooked breakfast.  The kids and I went down to the lake for a swim and a bit of a relax and The LOML snuck away ... for mischief!  I came back to the cabin for lunch and found bunting and balloons hung everywhere around the outside of the cabin.  Inside was just the same.  There was no mistaking that it was my 30th birthday!  There was wine and cheese on the table outside along with one of those corny badges.

Inside they had unpacked their presents and cards ... (along with presents from the rest of my family)

I was spoilt with lots of lovely presents ...

And The LOML had even attempted to make a cake in the cabin oven.  He had packed the cake mix and the cake tin just to make me a cake.  Unfortunately for him the oven didn't work very well and the gas kept shutting off so it was only kind of cooked but it tasted wonderful!!!

All afternoon strangers stopped to wish me "Happy Birthday"!  Word must have spread around the campsite as they were even coming up to me at dinner in the restaurant.  We had a delicious dinner at the campsite restaurant where you choose your own meat and veg and cook it on the hotplate in the middle of the table.  We even had crepes for dessert cooked on the same hotplate.  We had lots of fun.

It is a wonderful feeling to be spoilt by your family.  I had never felt as loved as I did that day.  The four of them had thought of everything.  That was definitely a summer of loving :-)  Family loving.

Chipper