Abi & Izzy - the next 5 years

  Having had a beautiful week of sunshine, perfect for Izzy's week of den building and camp out, the heavens have opened this weekend and it has poured with rain. This of course is bad timing, not just for Izzy who was camping out in the shelter she and Grace had constructed, but also for Glenn who this weekend is riding from Newcastle to London - 315 miles - in 24 hours. Yuk! Not only is it wet but windy as well - poor Glenn. Oh well, its Sunday morning, we haven't heard from him yet but we are working on no news is good news. I'm sure he will come home having enjoyed the experience. While Glenn has been away we have been making the most of a girls weekend with Izzy and I sitting down to watch The Golden Compass while Abi was  at a sleepover at Mia's, and Abi and I having a lovely mooch through town while Izzy was at camp, followed by roasting of marshmallows on the fire pit in the sunshine. Izzy had an amazing time at camp, albeit it was very wet on ...

What an amazing weekend we've had, with such lovely memories to treasure. To be able to experience a conservation park such as Port Lympne out of hours and see these rare and endangered animals at all times of the day without crowds of people around is a real privilege, particularly when you can scoot around the park and take private short cuts in your golf buggy - the highlight of the trip for some! Our weekend didn't start particularly well, with the normal stress that comes with any Drinkwater trip. Glenn is not a patient man when it comes to getting 2 kids and various bits of luggage into the car, and of course it required more than one attempt before everyone definitely had everything they wanted, where they wanted it! We set off and quickly hit traffic - and so inevitably we ended up needing to stop for a comfort break (for me - rest of the family never seem to need to stop) and to feed 2 increasing snappy girls. I made the decision to take us off the route to...

The week has been mostly quiet, too quiet. We are into that phase of the holiday where the girls are off doing various activities, and for this week (and most of next), it doesn't involve us. Abi went off to Angie's on Sunday - happy as anything - merrily wishing me goodbye and saying "you don't need to ring me too often!" With Izzy joining her on Tuesday morning, her first time away somewhere that's neither family or friends, staying 2 nights and also loving it, I feel like that's going to be a habit that's hard to break. While I love the fact that we've produced these confident little girls who are happy to go and experience new things, I do miss them when they are gone. Not just the noise, the fighting, the mess and so on - clearly I miss all of this (!), but more then anything else I miss the contact and cuddles. I forget just how lovely it is to have small arms around me, holding me tight and whispering "I love you mummy" at be...

So now we are back from France it's a social whirl for the girls, and I have had to resort back to the normal summer spreadsheet to keep up! Tonight both girls are away, Abi has gone off for a second week at Angie's riding, Izzy will join her for a few nights on Tuesday, and Izzy is at Mia's - pretty much their second home these days. On Thursday Glenn needed to get into London so the girls opted for a day with their extended family, JoJo and the tribe. Regardless of the fact that they don't see them as regularly now as they used to they still love to catch up and it's like they've been together always. Abi immediately took charge of Eleanor and refused to let anyone else push her around, and Izzy and Edward were back to being as close as ever. Jo is brilliant at recreating old photos to show how they've grown - just one more to add to the picture these days. In addition to this they've been to the cinema, swimming and made the most of the generall...

What can I say, our lovely holiday in the Dordogne is over and done with for another year and despite the fact that we stayed for 10 days rather than the normal week it felt like it passed in a flash. Happy memories though. Highlights of the week included meeting our Woolton Hill neighbours for dinner and a pool party - they had coincidentally booked a holiday for the same dates just up the road from us! The kids loved showing off the house and playing in the pool with Grace and Finn. I managed a passable BBQ for them while Simon and Glenn went riding, they proceeded to cremate ours when they got home - nothing to do with the 3 glasses of wine I had in the meantime I'm sure!  Both girls loved seeing Jerry and Pauline, and catching up with the horses again, This year Combostel, Bel Ami and Tulin were joined by Amigo, a lovely skewbald. They managed a couple of rides in between the hottest days, the last of which almost ended u in a disaster when Tulin spooked and unseate...

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 ...

What a week. Despite the fact I normally keep these blogs very much to what's happening inside our little family, this week's event have been so monumental it's worth recording how we feel even if we can't yet record the impact. So this week after much hype and one of the most scandalous campaigns ever (so much tosh delivered by both sides as what might happen), the country voted on whether to Remain or Leave the EU. We all went to bed on Thursday evening very much expecting the result to be Remain - that's what all the bookmakers and polls predicted....and woke on Friday to find we had, by a very narrow margin, voted to Leave. Who would have thought it - 72% of the country voted and Leave won by a few percentage points. The last 48 hours have been somewhat mad - Cameron stepping down, half the labour cabinet either sacked or stepping down, votes of no confidence everywhere - as I said, slightly surreal and mostly bonkers. Social media has been on fire...