Bonfire night is one of the nights I remember quite vividly from my childhood. The happy faces, the chill in the air and the smell of jacket potatoes in the oven. Some years we had our own fireworks at the bottom of my Grandparents garden. I remember some years watching the fireworks opposite our house from the warmth of my bedroom, and walking down to the local pub to see their bonfire.
We always bought parkin from our local family run bakery, it was a lovely place where the staff all knew your name and asked how you were, they even remembered what things you regularly bought. They made the most amazing giant chocolate cookies all year round, but their parkin near bonfire night was delicious.
This is our first bonfire night in several years that I haven’t had a small baby at home, or being ill in pregnancy (I suffered from Hyperemesis in all four pregnancies), and this year I really wanted to make it special for our four little ones. We planned to make parkin in the morning, have traditional jacket potato’s bonfire night tea, followed by parkin for dessert. We wanted to create some wonderful patterns with our sparklers, walk into our local town to see their firework display before returning home to a slow cooker hot chocolate with marshmallows.
That was the plan…
Not quite the Yorkshire Parkin I remember
Being from the heart of Yorkshire we decided to make the children some traditional parkin for dessert. We followed the recipe to make parkin in the morning. Unfortunately I am not very good at reading the full recipe first, and usually follow it as we go along. We got right to the very end before I read ‘For best results, wrap the Parkin in greaseproof paper and foil and leave it for three days. This will allow the cake to become softer and stickier’
We had a taste, our parkin was nice, but drier and not the softer stickier texture I remember from my childhood. So, we wrapped it up to try again in a few days instead of having it as our bonfire night dessert. Hopefully if it turns out well, we might remember to make Parkin in advance next year…
An accident
We have two sofas in our living room and when we pull the smaller one forward to make space for our clothes airer, the arms are close enough together for the children to support themselves by their arms and swing. Amy loves doing this, and despite asking her hundreds of times not to swing, she still swings, she just can’t help the urge to swing.
Today she lost her balance and fell, landing on her arm. For a few terrifying moments, we thought it might have been broken because she wouldn’t move it and couldn’t grip very well. We are so lucky that her Nanna is a trained nurse and was able to check her over and after a lot of tears, and little nap she was feeling a lot better and had gained a lot of movement.
A change of plan
We knew it wouldn’t be sensible to take Amy out with her sore arm, so we decided to stay at home instead and watch some of the fireworks from the warmth of our living room and bedroom windows. It all worked out quite well in the end as Ava decided she wanted to go to bed soon after tea, which meant we could spend some time with the older three and their sparklers without worrying that 17-month-old Ava might get hurt.
The bigger two were understandably disappointed at missing the fireworks, so after tea, myself and Amy snuggled up on the sofa with hot chocolate and Paw Patrol while James, Lily and Daddy headed out to see if they could see some fireworks. When they returned home we snuggled on the sofa with a film and their hot chocolates.
Being together
We have had an unexpected but nice bonfire night together (injury excepted) and the most important part was spending it with each other. I absolutely love fireworks and the atmosphere on bonfire night, and we had planned to go out but we really enjoyed our night at home instead. In all honesty, the plan to go out was for the bigger children and Mr T, as a parent I find it hard to relax in crowds of people, and the little ones are often scared of the noise, crowds and dark, it’s a recipe for disaster! At the same time, I am really looking forward to future bonfire nights when the children are older so we can all enjoy it together.
Amy helping with the Parkin, before she hurt her arm
EDITED TO ADD: The next morning Amy’s arm was twice as swollen and bruised. We headed to minor injuries, who sent us to our local a&e to have an x-ray. Poor Amy had broken her elbow and has now a cast covering her arm which has to stay in place for six weeks. I feel awful for not taking her sooner but she is doing okay thankfully. Poor little lady.
I am linking up with Katie at MummyDaddyMe for #TheOrdinaryMoments
