Abi & Izzy - the next 5 years

Arghhhh! How many times do we have to say to Abi "just listen to me and do as you are told please"?!?! It's what winds me up more than anything about her and it's so frustrating as she knows it bugs us and she still does it! Today was no exception - she waltzed into the kitchen and immediately pushed Izzy's feet off the stool she was comfortably curled up on reading. I asked her not to do it and so she did it again - why is that necessary?! When I asked her why she felt the need to come in and disrupt the peace she just shrugged with a 'because I can and it's so easy to get a rise out of you...' as I said, arghhhh! Yesterday we had the pleasure of running the cafe at the monthly village market. This was the bright idea of our next door neighbour to help raise funds towards the charity triathlon the kids are all doing later in the year. The idea was we would get them involved, they would learn the value of working for your money and we would not hav

Well, not quite the half term I was expecting to have, but what week off ever is?! We've had some lovely highlights with friends and family, but also some stresses to deal with as well. The week kicked off with the boiler blowing out on Thursday only for us to realise we'd run out of oil. This was very unexpected - Glenn always keeps an eye on the levels, but sure enough, all gone. We managed to get Jared The Boiler Man in at short notice and he got us back up and running on some emergency supplies, only for it to go again. We got a full fuel top up sorted and the whole system repressurised and thought we were done only for me to go out for a walk to find a strong smell of oil at the bottom of the garden. Quick check and the tank is half empty! Turns out we had sprung a leak. We debated at length what to do but knew the right thing to do was report it so about 9:30 on Sunday evening we took a deep breath and rang the Environment Agency. Monday morning was all go - 2 special

So after a tough week of saying goodbye to Scooby it was inevitable that we would need some cheering up. Knowing we were going to lose him at some time - he did have amazingly long last legs after all - we had already had the discussion about what we might have as a new friend for  Bertie. I had been very much in the camp of something smaller, Glenn was adamant he wasn't prepared to have a puppy and the kids just wanted a new dog to make two. We toyed with the idea of a Cocker Spaniel for a short while until I came back from a walk the other day and announced it wasn't happening - the mud round here would mean we would constantly be washing it and the floors and it would drive us both mad. Despite their occasional poor reputation we've both always liked Staffies and so that's what Glenn was looking for. Obviously looking for a slightly older dog is somewhat perilous. We didn't want a rescue so then it's about finding a lovely dog that for no fault of its own

What a sad post to write. After so much discussion and deliberation tomorrow we say goodbye to the most faithful of dogs, Scooby. We're gutted and I can't tell you how guilty I feel that we've called it too soon, that maybe he's ok and we could make a different decision but we all know the truth, he's been declining for months and if we don't do it tomorrow the best we can hope for is another week or so, and even then we run an ever increasing risk that he suffers a massive system failure and dies in a horrible state. We just don't want that for us or him. This all came to a head when we agreed we should take him to the vet - his least favourite place in the world - to look at the huge lump on his leg. We explained the collapses he's had, the weight loss, his increasing slowness and the hair loss and so they suggested scanning his heart first to check he would survive an operation. The vet called Glenn to say what we already knew, his deterioration d