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End of term

Goodness me it's the last week of term already and finally we have some sunshine. It feels like the rain would never stop - the garden has been decimated with heavy downpours and while the grass looks green, it's all a bit soggy underfoot. The kids don't care but we are fed up of still having to wash the dogs off after a walk when it's supposed to be summer!  Of course this is all about to change as we are off to France this time next week - cue unbroken sunshine and a wilting rather than washed out garden! I can't wait to go but I'm also very conscious that it will be over in a flash and then a whole year before we can go again. It's the one holiday that I look forward to all year round - the joys of familiarity!

The good news is that we do have various things to look forward to after we come back (apart from back to work and the rest of the school holidays of course). It's our 10th anniversary next month and after a lot of discussion as to what we might do to celebrate we have concluded that we'd prefer to do something with the kids and so we are off for 2 nights in a luxury treehouse overlooking the rhino enclosure at Port Lympne safari park. We could have chosen glamping next to the bears, or pods next to the wolves but I thought we'd go for the posh option. There is a possible technical hitch - you have to climb 50 steps to get to the treehouse so Abi could well be glued to the walls and refuse to come out to see any of the animals, but I'm hoping she'll be fine and any fear of heights will be allayed by the fact there is a solid floor. Izzy is currently most excited not by the large numbers of animals but that we get our own golf buggy to use to move around the park after hours...I'm sure that doesn't surprise anyone! Abi wants to know if we get to feed the animals before the park opens - who knows.

Izzy is turning into a proper little book worm and is now on book 14 of The Famous Five and just loving it. It's taken over the iPad and she's now more likely to be hidden in a corner somewhere buried in her book than she is watching some rubbish on You Tube (the latter does still happen). She's clearly missed her time though. Yesterday we went into town to get some summer clothes for them after realising very little fits suddenly and she bought some hairnets to wear to bed - apparently to stop her getting bed hair! Between this, Call the Midwife and the salt on her boiled egg (which she insisted on at tea time), she should have been born in the 1940s! We had to giggle last night as she went to bed in PJs and her hairnet - funny girl!

Abi's favourite read is unchanged - horse manuals or the Guinness Book of Records. Just like her father, no nonsense factual books only! She's more of a music girl and loves nothing more now than to disappear upstairs to listen to Taylor Swift, practising until she's word perfect. She's a bit like me though - I think you either are or aren't someone who can get all the words out in the right order...I never could! I am a bit daunted though by her sudden maturity - she arrived in high heels and a dress yesterday to lip sync a song to me and it was very apparent that the hormones are just around the corner. I'm making every effort to savour all the time we have left before my beautiful baby turns into a hormonal monster - please let it be ages yet!

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