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New job!

This week has been full of champagne and celebrations as I had my new job confirmed - woo hoo! If I look back to Christmas I said that the perfect scenario would be to have some time off, get paid to the end of May and then walk into a fab new job at the start of the summer.  Lo and behold this is what has happened - perfect planning or just good luck- who knows but I'm very pleased.  What might have been even better could have been the opportunity to have the summer off with the family, but I'm ready to get stuck back into it and a longer break would have just made it even harder to go back so I think this is a good compromise.

The girls are mixed in their response to the news I'm going back to work.  Both were really pleased and proud of me for getting through the partnership process and hearing I'd got the role.  I came back on Tuesday to a series of lovely 'well done Mummy' paintings which they had spent the afternoon doing.   On the other hand we all know the transition is going to be a bit bumpy as we get used to the new routine.  Hopefully any disruption will be short lived and we'll soon be into the swing of it.  Conversely Abi told me I was mean to her this afternoon (I wouldn't let her do something) and that "she didn't care that I was going back to work soon..." Ouch - trust she doesn't mean that.

Today we had the most wonderful weather - summer finally looked like it was on its way - and we all made the most of it by getting outside as much as possible.  It's been one of those weekends where we planned to do very little but fitted a lot in. Abi is joining me on her first sportive in a few weeks time so we set off today on a little training ride.  She did amazingly well - we did 6.5 miles in just over an hour and I can attest to the fact that sometimes half the speed can result in double the pleasure.  Our ride turned into a real nature ramble - we rescued a slow worm from the middle of the road, saw a frog, red kites and all manner of other wildlife.  When we got home Glenn took Izzy out for a mini version of our ride (despite it only being a mile or so Glenn was banned from wearing his flip flops and had to put 'proper shoes' on!) so she wasn't left out.  Both still love their bikes - long may it continue.

The sunshine also brought all the kids out in the cul de sac and this weekend they have spent most of the day in and out of each others houses having a great time.  We have 5 houses with 10 kids between 2 and 10 so it's a real tribe if they are all out.  We seem to have a good combination of personalities and so far everyone has been pretty amenable to suddenly finding 3 or 4 additional little ones arriving with their own, generally wanting food or a drink.  The only downside to this is that they don't want to go anywhere else - not such a bad thing I suppose. We did comment that roll forward a few years and we'll barely see them.  Not sure if I'm looking forward to that or not!

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