This week Y celebrated her 6th birthday with her friends. Here they run towards the final programme item, eating at a pancake restaurant. It was her first proper children’s party, as on her 4th she hadn’t entered school yet due to the pandemic schoool closures and her 5th also coincided with a pandemic lockdown.
Yesterday was a mixed day. We prepared for Y’s sixth birthday party, and were at the vet where our 17yr old cat was put down.
Our last living cat, head of the household since October 2020, last week enjoying a nap in the garden.
Packaging Y’s presents, and blowing up balloons in the evening. As expected she stood fully dressed by our bed this morning at 6:30 to start her birthday party, so we were right in not thinking we could do the prep early in the morning.
Yesterday we spent a great day with Y’s grandma and grandpa at Wildlands in Emmen. Wildlands is the completely rebuilt zoo of Emmen, near where E’s parents live. In a much bigger space they have created a nautical/polar, a savannah/safari and a jungle/tropics route, mimicking full ecosystems with huge attention to detail. The jungle section has a hall of 18,000 m2 (190,000 sq ft), the largest in any zoo in the world, and the largest greenhouse in Europe, where a myriad of plants grow, butterflies, birds, and monkeys roam freely, and elephants graze. Y was very happy to see her grandparents and she walked by herself most of the day, the weather was great and there weren’t too many people in the park. It was a very relaxed day off, ending with a bbq in E’s parents’ garden.
