Mum's birthday

I had a lovely evening in Stockton on Tees for my Mum's birthday last weekend. We all went to TGI Fridays, Mom, Roger, Maxine, Jonathan and the boys.

It was good fun and nice food. I had chicken quesadilla (or however you spell it) and a huge pudding of waffle, fruit and ice-cream, most of which went untouched, lovely though it was. I guess as they say in the North, my eyes were too big for my belly. The bill for five adults and two children, with a bottle of wine and other drinks was £120 which I thought wasn't too bad really.

Alex and Joel were very taken with the singing waiters and waitresses who serenaded the birthday guests at different tables but Mum preferred to keep a low profile so we didn't get the full treatment ourselves.

She liked her birthday presents - various sweatshirts and casual tops, which I went in about 40 shops all over the city centre to track down following the request. Apparently sweatshirts, unless they have sporting logos on the front are suddenly "pants".

We spent quite a bit of time going over the family tree research I had also done to celebrate the occasion. Sadly the outcome of the research was far from suitable for a celebration. A very sad story of a family missing from the 1851 census in a village near Sutton Coldfield. We had been searching for them for over 25 years. It transpires that the reason we could not find them was because they were ravaged by TB. The mother died, probably the father too, several of the children and then the remnants of the family were farmed out to people who could take them in. It was a real tragedy. I wasn't sure how she would take the news, even though they died 150 years ago, when you research your ancestors you do feel very close to them, even if you never met them and you dont know what they looked like. At least we know now what happened to them and can stop poring over lists of emigrants on ships.

I came away with a Christmas present wish list for the boys - computer games and music CDs are the items of choice for this year.