It's beginning to feel a bit like Christmas...

I was sure I write the blog last week.... but, it seems another 2 weeks have flown by and now we are staring down the barrel of the Christmas holidays and the end of the year!

Currently it's all about Doug and what a star he has proved to be so far. He has now been with us for 3 weeks and he is (so far, I keep thinking at some point it will change) a pretty chilled out puppy. As a second dog he has been thrown in at the deep end and has been to Sunday lunch with Alan & Sarah (which he loved), socialised at home with friends and their dogs, met babies (he loved Elsie) and started to go for walks.

The walking has been a bit different to our previous approaches with new dogs. In the past we have ventured out carefully, making sure that our new baby only walks a short distance so they can experience all the new sights and sounds. Doug's first walk was after Sunday lunch last week, just him and 8 other dogs for bout 45 mins - he loved it! In our defence we didn't let him walk the whole way (he was very annoyed at having to ride in the old dog carrier!) but when he was allowed to be out he had a ball.

Betty back to her old self

At home he is proving to be great, as long as there isn't a Christmas tree bauble in sight, or in fact a trailing wire he might be able to grab and chew on. So far he hasn't managed to electrocute himself but it feels like it's just a matter of time. He really is a sweetie, we would be very sad if he did himself an injury so having set up the Christmas tree in the kitchen, we decided in the end to move it to the sitting room where at least we can shut the door on it. 

This weekend has been the normal whirlwind of activity, kicking off with the girls end of term house
Christmas party on Friday evening, followed by a visit from Kerrie and Elsie on Saturday morning, before Simon and Sharron turned up on Saturday lunchtime for the weekend. We picked Izzy and her friend Romany up from her final hockey match of the season at 6pm (undefeated all season and player of the match), before heading to the Rising Sun in West Bagborough for dinner. Today we did lunch for Simon, Sharron and Jon and Lucy (having dropped kids off in various directions), then they headed home and George and Deb turned up for a coffee and catch up. Then it was back out to collect kids again before all landing back here about 6pm. No wonder the weekends fly by!

The girls have 2 more days in school before they break up and are off until the 6th January,  a day later than planned to allow the boarders time to get back in, quarantine if need be until all the Covid tests are back.

The one thing that has dominated the last few weeks is the growing panic of the new variant, Omicron, and the 'threat' it poses. Although to date there is no evidence of it being more than a mild infection, it's clearly resulting in a much higher rate of post vaccination infections and the government ha been concerned enough to reimpose restrictions. So we are back to working from home unless essential to be in the office, mask wearing in public places and isolation in the event you are tagged as a contact. Ugh. We are rapidly moving into year 3 of the pandemic - who would ever have thought that would be the case, it's madness. At least we all know how to manage the restrictions now and in a place like this, where there is space and open countryside, we still feel relatively protected from the busy hubbub of the major cities. I will work from home until Christmas and then reassess. If it still seems to be mild and I've had my booster then I will probably go into work once a week -  otherwise it's easy to feel more and more disconnected from your employer.

The main thing for me is that the kids stay in school. All along the upside of the virus has been that children are relatively risk free from an infection perspective and the damage done from home schooling is far more than the risk of Covid. It feels we have learnt this lesson at the very least.

This all feels a bit doom and gloom so what's the good news? Well, we have had the house painted inside and it looks fab! The work we did on the windows at the front has paid dividends and we are so pleased with how it all looks. The conveyancing on the land purchase is progressing slowly but we feel there is a far chance we will get to the end of the year and look back on all we have achieved and feel proud. Its been a massive slog but when we look at our house now we know it was all worth it. Hard work often is.