Abi & Izzy - the next 5 years

As ever, blink and it's gone. It's Sunday evening and I'm sitting here wondering where all my brain cells went in the space of a week. I'm pretty sure when I left work only last Friday I knew what I was doing. Now I can't remember a thing. I believe this is the sign of a good break, but it does leave me attitude ad concerned about tomorrow! We've all had a lovely week, albeit doing different things. Last Friday Glenn took the girls down to Somerset where they spent a week running free and being entertained partly by Fifi and Grumps but mostly it seems by the pigs. By the time they got home they had (in their dreams) redesigned the garden to accommodate 2 pigs who would 'live forever foraging in the woods and sleeping in the pod'. They'd got it all worked out. They were planning on putting Lazylawn down to stop them from messing up the lawn as they trotted from pod to woods, with an electric fence to stop them from wandering too far. Hmmmm, I think ...

Ah, the joys of having our garden (almost!) finished and just in time for summer - what could be better?! Malcom and the boys finally packed up the vast majority of their tools and the garden is ours. The beds are mostly planted, the paths are all but finished, the orange netting is everywhere to try and keep Bertie off the grass seed... I can't tell you how lovely it is to have both house and garden done. I will happily say that I'm struggling not to tell anyone who steps foot over the thresehold how pleased I am with what we have achieved in a relatively short space of time. Who knew when I first got made redundant 18 months ago just how much pleasure we would get from that money, as well as just how quickly you can spend a good sum of money. Just the maintenance which will continue forevermore - including gutter clearing with 2 swimming costume clad daughters to catch the gunk! Last weekend I was still planting (64 box plants to be exact as well as a number of beds), so ...

What will the girls do when all the piles of earth have gone, and the house is back to normal? More to the point, what will the dogs do without their daily dose of additional dogs to play with, people to watch and mud to bring into the house?   We on the other hand are quite looking forward to not having to sweep up the daily mountain of mud and sand that gets walked into the house by everyone, and constantly tidying up whatever corner we can that is nearing completion. The garden is looking amazing and it's definitely been worth the 6 weeks of upheaval. We both agree that this has been easier than having the house done which was pretty awful. We have been incredibly lucky with the weather which has been fantastic pretty much throughout. If we'd had the normal April showers it would have been just horrible - the mud would have been everywhere. This week the block paving outside the garage has been completed which makes that area look very smart. Once we've moved the pil...

Another year passes and our little Izzy is 7, finally. It always feels like Abi's birthday comes around very quickly while we crawl toward Izzy's like a snail. Having said that April has been and gone in an instant so maybe it's a good thing. As ever we struggle to decide what either of the girls want for their birthday. Once we've discounted the obvious - a pony or a baby brother - then we are into the more obscure. This year when asked there was definitely still a medical theme and so I spent an evening buying  real stethoscope, boxes of 100 surgical gloves (white not blue) and a medic suit (age 5-7 and still too big!). Add to this some money (already spent on 2 new baby dolls, one for each of them courtesy of Izzy's generosity) and she was a happy little girl. After a lot of discussion about parties we settled on a pony party - a couple of hours with picnic tea at the stables. I had the unenviable task of picking 6 very excited little girls up from school in...