Brighton Pride and dinner with the cousins

Rob took the boys to goalie practice first thing and whilst he was there got some bad news about a friend so although he had planned to join us for the day he stayed home and we got out of the way so he could call round and let his friends know what had happened.

The Pride parade and festival was fun, very colourful and lots of happy vibes going on. We walked down to watch some of the parade, Ebi-kun hasn't seen a non Japanese festival/parade before so he was a bit bewildered but it was a good way to open up the conversation if he had questions about it all.

It was great to see people of all shapes, sizes and colours letting go and enjoying themselves

And of course it was very colourful, loud and fun. Lots of dancing, cheering and high fives

And of course, plenty of fabulous outfits, I could certainly get into the outfit making side of things.

I can't believe the footwear that some of them were walking in and had managed to walk 3 miles in, I would have given up after the first 10 yards!

It looks quite sunny here but as the end of the parade went past the heavens opened and we all got soaked - 4 of us trying to shelter under one brolly!

Di had won tickets to the festival site and the kids got in free. To be honest they hadn't got the organization down at all. The staff were all telling us different things. We ended up in the main arena which wasn't too bad in the middle of the day but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be suitable for kids later in the day!

Eventually we managed to find the kids area which was great. They had a load of free entertainment on which included face-painting. Ebi-kun decided he wanted his doing and of course because he had his done Ry wanted his doing too. The woman doing the painting did a great job, Ebi-kun loved it! The heavens opened again so we were a bit late in leaving to get to my uncle Si's house. 

The boys looking adorable - don't let them know that I said that!

My uncle is just 4 years older than me so his kids are my cousins, which is a bit weird, having cousins 40 years younger than you! It all gets very confusing with the who cousin situation because my other cousins have got kids that are more Ebi-kuns age, so we have given up trying to decide what kind of cousin they are and they all get the blanket "cousin" title!

Even though the kids only get to see each other once a year, they just got on with it and went to play straight away, so us adults could get down to some serious wine drinking and catch up!

Si had given the kids shots of smoothies, I don't think F was impressed hahaha.

Family Summer Festival

A couple of days in and the jet lag is just about clearing up! We had a not so fun start to the day, my step-dad has had a couple of strokes and has had to move into a home, he has only just moved in and my mom got a call in the morning to say he had had a fall and bumped his head so they had called an ambulance.

It meant a trip to the hospital and a barrage of tests but he was given the all clear and was back at the home by lunchtime. In the afternoon we all went down and met with Ebi-kuns cousins because they had a family day fund raiser going on. First up was Punch and Judy, A-chan grew up in Greece and only moved back to the UK a year ago so neither her or Ebi-kun had any idea what Punch and Judy was about.

I was quite surprised that it was the original storyline, domestic violence issues obviously hasn't caught up here yet! There was a disclaimer at the end telling the kids not to copy what they had seen!

There was also face painting, bouncy castle, cakes to be bought a raffle - I won a 20 quid gift voucher and a tombola where I won nowt! Andy was the first dad to get his facepainted, comical because he is a big chap and about 6'5" tall!

M-chan is such a little dot and was a leopard...

A-chan got hers done later. There is only 4 months between A-chan and Ebi-kun but she is a good head taller, it's hard to believe they are so close in age!

Ebi-kun was a lion...

Papie made it outside for a while, it was good to see him out in the sun. It's great that the home has these days, it was a lovely community spirit and I'm sure the residents love having the family and kids around.

When we were done there we all headed back home for dinner, the kids get on really well although we did have a mad half hour doing 'yoga'. Fun day and turned out to be a late night but at least I slept through until 5.30am!