Picnic in the park

Today was our picnic for Allergy UK Free From Feast. We've had a fab afternoon in the park with our friends and raised lots of money for a charity that is so important to me and Monkey.

It was really grey and miserable when we got up and I thought the picnic was going to be a disaster. Luckily it had brightened up by the time we came out of Monkey's ballet lesson. We did have another problem though - we were 9 miles from home and the bus couldn't get through as there was a car on fire. This was at 11.40 and I'd asked people to be at the park from 2.00. I still had butties to make and just to add to my stress my mobile was dead son I couldn't contact anyone to ask them to come a bit later..

Monkey didn't seem to realise we had a problem and she slept while I stressed.. Luckily the fire service did an amazing job of clearing the road and making it safe for everyone.. Half an hour late our bus arrived and we were on our way.

Once we were home, it was a bit of a mad dash to get everything ready but we did it and we got to the park with time to spare. Of course this gave me time to stress about something else - would anyone actually turn up? I'd forgotten how fab my friends were and it wasn't long before the park was full of babies.

All the food at the picnic was Monkey friendly, so no dairy, soya, egg, wheat, apples or pears. It was all tasty though and even with my over catering tenancies there wasn't much left.. A lot of people ask me what Monkey actually eats when I tell them about her allergies so I'm hoping we've shown them that with a bit of thought and planning she can still enjoy her food. And enjoy it she certainly does!

We had a really lovely afternoon. The sunshine helped and it was also wonderful to just be able to let Monkey eat what she wanted without worrying. The highlight of the day for me was Monkey getting her very first taste of cake. It's impossible to buy a safe cake for her (if you know different PLEASE let me know!) but my super talented friend Catherine is making Monkey's birthday cake so today she brought some of her practice cake. It was amazing! You wouldn't know it was a free from cake at all. Monkey loved it! She sat next to it and was very anti social. She didn't play with the other babies, she just ate cake until she fell asleep in it.

I posted a few weeks ago about why Free From Feast is important to us so I was really pleased with how this afternoon went. I want to say a big thank you to everyone who came this afternoon, everyone who has donated and everyone who has supported me and Monkey with our fundraising and with keeping her safe. Our original fundraising target of £75 has been smashed and we're closer to £200. There's still time to donate here