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What a year!

Blink and a year has passed already in our house, I guess we can no longer call it the 'new' house now. I've been madly trying to get all the last bits and pieces sorted but failed at the last hurdle. We are missing a piece of beading and a kick plate adjustment from Chris (may be a while) and we are now on our second attempt at kitchen splash backs after the first didn't quite make the grade. Jo and Matt came to fit them and as soon as they put them onto the wall Glenn started to look uncomfortable. When Jo asked what was up he pointed out the Union Jack design was painted upside down - oops. Mere mortals wouldn't have noticed but to him it's all wrong so down they are coming and the new ones are on order. It was another indicator for me that if nothing else the past year has instilled more patience in me. A year ago I'd have been very frustrated but I've learnt that these little things are first world problems and it will all come good in due course. A valuable lesson.

The girls are on half term now and I have a week off - bliss. This weekend we had Amanda, Alex and the boys staying which Abi and Izzy have been so excited about. They've loved having them here and as ever they all played together so nicely, with lots of conversation about farms of the future as ever.  Long may it continue that they are so happy together. We also have Mum and Dad on Wednesday, Liz and Dave (briefly) on Thursday and Simon and Audrey on Friday. We clearly are the place to be this week!

We have been reflecting on Abi's effort card after the end of term and sat down with her this afternoon to discuss it. There has been a theme of either not persevering or not seeking assistance and so we tried to explore it. Turns out she's worried to ask too many questions because they have a set number of 'question cards' per day they can use, and she has 6. The rule is 'brain, book, buddy, boss', i.e. You think first, consult your books, ask your buddy and only then ask the teacher. All very well but Abi is worried she'll use up all her question cards before the end of the day and when she really has something she needs to ask she'll be all out! Not good and clearly something for discussion with her teachers.

We're reading Roald Dalhl's Tales of Childhood at the moment which both girls are loving - it's basically his autobiographic younger years and full of hints at where his stories developed from. There's a story about the thrall of his local sweet shop and how enticing the sweets were. Despite not remembering much from that time, he vividly remembers the owner. This got me thinking of our local sweet shop when we were 8 and 9 years old. As with him, I vividly remember our sweet shop owner, Mrs Sealy (Nesta) who was the wife of Peter the post office manager. We would walk home from the school bus stop and spend whatever we'd managed to save from our dinner money on a quarter of sweets. Amanda would have bonbons and I would have pear drops or sherbet lemons. All these sweets were in the book and so I promised the girls that we would go to the old fashioned sweet shop in town and everybody would get a quarter (well, 100g) of sweets. Izzy had to have a gobstopper in her pick and mix despite me assuring her it doesn't taste of anything and Abi had strawberry bootlaces. Glenn got blackjacks and I had chocolate limes and mint humbugs. Needless to say it no longer costs a few pennies but they loved the whole experience. Let's hope we created some memories today as mine have lasted a lifetime.

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