30) Have a weekend away

Well when you have two small children, getting a weekend away with adults is a truly rare thing and probably only achieved when I've had some netball kit to wear!

So, it was a definite one to strive to and in the end I thought, what better way than to have a girlie weekend to celebrate my birthday!

So off to Center Parcs we went, as a proposed team of six (although one of my mates came down ill just the day before and had to pull out) with much fun and madness on the agenda and no entry to the villa unless carrying a bottle of champagne.

I toyed with looking at us having a break in a town or city and staying at a B&B but actually the beauty of being at Center Parcs was we had our own little pad, en suite rooms and fab leisure facilities. While we were miles from the car park or the main facilities, through some cunning, walking and cadging lifts, somehow I managed to avoid having to use the land train all weekend. Thanks ladies.

Rachel looking 'pensive' - in explorer mode

My friend Ellie and I rocked up early on the Friday and made great haste to get to the Subtropical water paradise. It didn't disappoint. We discovered the outdoor pool and almost congratulated ourselves on being outside in a pool in January. And then I found the white water rapids. OMG. Basically fling yourself from the warm pool into a cold waterfall and then get yourself swept along a path of water up and down and over and around - so much fun! We screamed and laughed and said 'again, again' like kids. I only went on it twelve times over two days. Brilliant. We also took in water slides and had general merry fun. And then brought the rest of the crew into the madness the next day!

We drank, we ate, we laughed, we sang, we had a ball. We saw a rabbit outside our apartment, and as one of my favourite animals ever I was touched he came along too. I made sure I made a note of the wildlife I'd see for him.

Bunny comes to say hi!

We also made sure that the weekend embraced a day of J'ness (see no 38) but I'll talk more about that in another blog post. We had four or five of the foods I hadn't eaten, so that list is pretty much there as well and we started on the 10 languages for hello and goodbye but need to complete that (where is the list Melissa!)

On the Sat night we took in our Just Jhoom and the whole J ness in food, drink and costumes. Much late night drinking and chatting too.

Sunday morning spent watching Aussie Open tennis final and naturally being hungover ate lots of rubbish food. And I still have that wedding dress to fit into! More sit ups I think!

All in all it was a fantastic weekend and I can't thank the girls enough. Well I might if more of them got onto twitter and helped me with the 400 followers! And while I missed my babies the cuddles were great when I got home.

The message board - with a few to the housekeeper too!

The pad of 40 year old madness!