Abi & Izzy - the next 5 years

It's been one of those evenings where we realised too late that we hadn't got our act together on the school admin on Friday night. Cue much frustration and last minute washing... Abi had been selected for the local schools Under 11s Netball tournament and so of course we thought (she thought) it would be sensible to tie that into having 2 friends for a sleepover "so their Mums didn't have to get up early the following day". This meant a chaotic houseful after school, added to by Izzy going to Tavie's straight from school so they could go to gym club together. Glenn picked her up at 6:30pm and forgot to get her stuff out of the car... and so it is that he's doing the ironing now at nearly 10pm. When do the kids start to think about this for themselves?? The rest of the weekend has been pretty relaxed. The tournament was actually quite good fun - basically a reunion of people we know from St Gabriel's, swimming lessons and the village. The ki...

What an interesting week. We've had highs and lows as we embarked on a big conversation about the future, but after some soul searching and silence we have found our way to a plan which seems to be good for all. The discussion of last week - should we stay or should we go now - made it obvious that while I might be ready to throw everything up in the air and caution to the wind, the rest of the family are (thankfully) a bit more cautious. Glenn and I tiptoed around the discussion until Friday when we sat down and had a proper chat about what the future plan should be. My plan B was a 3 year idea which combines the kids being able to finish Thorngrove, us having more time to enjoy what we've done here, enough time to save up the bulk of the kids senior school fees and time for Glenn to find us the perfect property in the SW which reduces our mortgage to next to nothing. Perfect! We've even found a lovely coeducational independent school which, on paper admittedly, looks v...

Wet Sundays are always a bit of a danger zone for us - who knows what conversations can take hold? It's on a wet Sunday we decided to 'just look' at another dog and Bertie arrived within the week. It was also on a wet Sunday we talked about a new friend for Bertie for when Scooby was gone...and very nearly came home with Nigel (the English Bulldog / mahoosive great big bull in a China shop dog). So today was wet and windy and a conversation which has been circling around the house just a little took hold and took a life of its own - be warned! Every time we get The Week there is at least one amazing property, normally in Yorkshire, generally about half the value of ours and equally as nice. Every week Glenn shows it to me and comments on what a bargain you can get up North. Every week I think the same "if we did that I could escape the rat race and we could live a different life, a slightly slower life which doesn't leave me exhausted by Thursday and crawling t...

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...