Abi & Izzy - the next 5 years

Aghh - Sunday evening and I have to work tomorrow - bah humbug. I've become very much to my Mondays and I resent it when I don't get them. On the plus side I have Friday off though and we are going to Rome for the weekend so that's something to look forward to. Yesterday was another wet weekend day and so this afternoon I was determined to get everyone outside, despite my having a rubbish cold that kept me awake all last night sneezing or feeling like someone was ripping my throat out. It kept threatening to rain but I want going to let that stop me so I called a friend and suggested a dog walk. We've been talking about doing this for ages so that Bertie and Freya can meet some other dogs off their home territory but I've been a bit nervous about it. Today though I threw dogs and children in the van and off we went. All started well with no major mishaps, only for Bertie then to try and prove he was top dog. This went on for a little while until Freya got ...

Ugh - it's definitely January - the weather this weekend has been wall to wall rain, from Friday night until now and the forecast is more of the same. The poor dogs are wading though knee deep mud everywhere and are fed up of being jet washed every time we come back from a walk. The challenge with a wet weekend of course is what to do with the kids to ensure they don't spend their entire time on their iPads watching junk videos. This weekend we had a bit of \ head start in that they were both on a sleepover on Friday at Mia's which meant e had a wonderfully relaxing Saturday morning., I was up and walking the dogs at 7am, followed by a run and then off to an extra Yoga class before coffee with Zsara and home for lunch. Glenn went out on his endure bike with the boys and got home almost the same time as me so it was perfectly timed. We had an hour together before they all came back to us, Mia included, for the afternoon. Apparently they had played beautifully together at...

Back to school with a bit of a bump - more a slump than a bump in reality. Poor Izzy has had a bit of a rough week with some bug she picked up - the aftermath of the sick bug she had last week we think but who knows. She's been fine most mornings but then really tired in the afternoon and wracked with stomach pains by the evening. This meant another night of her in with me and Glenn in the spare room. Its one thing when your child is being physically sick - at least you feel you are doing some good when you are helping them. When its a stomach ache though it's horrible - I didn't feel I was doing anything at all other than being sympathetic... which at 2am, 3am and 4am is perhaps the best you can hope for...particularly when I have to go to work in the morning! Thank goodness by Thursday she was past the worst of it and the difference was noticeable - suddenly the noise level in the house was back to normal with a constant 'transmit' of thought and speech from...

Happy new year - we are nearly a week into 2018 already! This year I am mostly going to try and get more sleep and so far, everything is conspiring against me, not least the vampire child that is Izzy. Goodness knows how we are going to get her back into a routine for next week when they are back to school. Currently her ideal routine is to wake up sometime around 1 and then doze until at least 11am before slouching down in her PJs and not getting dressed until lunchtime. Obviously its incumbent on us to ensure that doesn't happen, but over the holidays it definitely seems to have become more of a thing, particularly as she will quite often go and play outside before we have noticed she's still not properly dressed! Of course the other aspect of this is she's then not tired at what I would call a sensible bedtime, so with me trying to get more sleep and her being a practising (fully fledged) teenager / vampire, we are now going to bed at the same time. I send her to her...

No time to say anything other than happy new year as we head into 2018 on the back of a whirlwind of socialising. More tomorrow, if my head allows it! G&T anyone?

Yea!!!! We managed to have a fab Christmas day!!! At last, after years of trying to be conventional and stick to the Christmas Day rules, our plans of a chilled out morning, motorbikes on Salisbury Plain followed by ham, eggs and chips for tea worked a treat - we all had a lovely day. The day didn't start as well as planned - we woke to find the boiler had blown out and wouldn't relight. Typical - keep it serviced and maintained and it goes offline on Christmas Day - what are the chances of that happening?!? We managed to get hold of our normal boiler man only to find he was away until the 30th - eek! It wasn't exactly cold but even so, we didn't want to huddle in one room with no hot water. Luckily he recommended someone in the village who was happy to come out. 45 minutes later, £104 and 3 bottles of wine lighter we were all fixed and back on track. We all agreed it was by far the best way to do Christmas - finally a recipe for us all! The rest of my Christmas...

It’s a strange feeling to have the house empty of both dogs and children. We are off to London tomorrow for my Christmas treat of Rick Astley at the KoKo Club in Camden and so we left the girls in Taunton and came home alone. Given we had been away we’d also outsourced the dogs to their normal holiday home and so it was very weird this morning to wake up without hearing expectant tails downstairs, weird and a bit disappointing for me. It was such a beautiful morning that I went for a walk anyway but it’s not the same without my mad, bad dogs to keep me company. Once I got back we did have a very nice, relaxing hour or so sitting drinking tea in the kitchen, chatting about the day and generally not getting going too fast! Since then we’ve chopped logs, sorted the house, done about 10 loads of washing (where did it all come from??), visited friends and then wrapped all the Christmas presents - not a bad day. Prior to all this peace we had the last day of term and then a wonderful cou...