Abi & Izzy - the next 5 years

It's half term and the clocks have gone back so we are currently all over the place with our routines. I've also got a few days (2 to be precise) off and so I'm making the most of not having to be up at the crack of dawn. I will freely admit that with the changing of the season and the knowledge that I soon wont have to do the 2 hour commute into Victoria, I'm finding it harder to get motivated to go into the office! This weekend we had the much anticipated reunion where at least part of the family managed to meet up again after decades of no contact. This was instigated by me and then became a bit of a band wagon, somewhat to my surprise. I made the decision after 30+ years that life is too short and so got in touch with Becky who I last saw I think when I was about 14 years old. It occurred to me a few weeks ago that this was simply daft - so much water had passed under the bridge that there was no need not to at least reach out and say hello. This turned into a p...

So last week's blog went by the wayside. I failed to wrote it on Sunday (not sure what happened there - what did we do last weekend?), I thought I would write it on Monday on the way into London, but the trains were messed up and then I got into work and suddenly there were a number of urgent (i.e. needed before yesterday) deadlines and I didn't lift my head up until I got them sorted on Friday about 8pm. So much for beginning to wind down before moving to a new job! I think it will get easier, but unlikely to be much before December. On a more positive note I have had a number of lovely emails from my new team welcoming me to the fold, and another one from the person I'm taking over from talking about my PA - yippeee - I will have help again!!! I don't know who is more pleased at this, me or Izzy, who always makes an effort to meet my PA and generally charms them to the point they talk more about her than anything else! The other problem with blogs these days is I ...

Walking around the lake in Ypres while waiting for the rugby to finish! A wet Monday evening after a lovely long weekend away in Ypres - just the two of us and just what I needed after what has been a relatively stressful few months of decision making. The decision is now made however and on Monday I resigned my job in order to join a new company in January. This will be the same role, but a company that hopefully offers more long term stability than my current one. It's been hard going through the initial round of telling people.Despite only being there for 7 months I've made some good friends and very quickly become established and everybody who I've told has been happy for me but very sad that I'm going - it hasn't made it easy. I do feel like I've been through the mill a bit this year - what with leaving EY, ramping up to a big new role, finding out it probably didn't have the longevity I was looking for and then going through the process of finding ...

Just to prove they do smile... We definitely have almost teenagers in the house and combine that with a 50+ year old man with OCD tendencies and I seem to spend half my life at the moment mediating between them all. It's still not too bad with Izzy, but Abi has her moments and wants to push against us and life life the way she wants to, not the way we think she should. Now lets e honest, at this stage we are talking about us thinking her clothes should live in the wardrobe, and her thinking they are fine on the floor / sideboard / washing basket. My view is rapidly becoming one of 'there are bigger battles we will have to fight,is this really one we want to fall out over?'. Glenn on the other hand is adamant that she needs to toe the line and do as she is told... now! Obviously it is my way to read various books and articles about it and then discuss the situation rationally. So far this is working well with Abi - we've had a number of chats about it this weekend ...

It's that time of year again, the Newbury Show, and this year I made a point of not planning on going with anyone else as that always results in dissatisfaction as we don't get to do the things we really wanted to do. The weather forecast was a tale of 2 halves this weekend, with glorious sunshine and summer temperatures on Saturday, followed by torrential rain and lightening for Sunday. Of course this meant that anybody contemplating the show made the decision to go on Saturday, us included. Given we knew the A34 would be a car park we took the back roads and despite the traffic being heavy it wasn't too bad - helped by the fact that we had already resigned ourselves to a queue. On getting there it was clear that the weather had brought out massive crowds and everywhere was packed, with the tents steaming and the poor animals looking like they'd had enough by lunchtime. We went into the pig tent and half the pigs had sensibly knocked their water buckets over to have ...

The end of yet another whirlwind weekend - I'm really not sure where they go to but one moment it's Friday afternoon and then the next it's Sunday evening. We had planned this weekend (unknown to Mum & Dad) to hot foot it down to Somerset on Friday evening in order to join the birthday boy for a 70th birthday dinner at a pub in Langport. Amanda had booked a room for us all with the expectation of us being there between 6 and 6:30... quite how I thought that was doable on a sunny Friday afternoon in September I don't know. Even the girls commented as I picked them up at gone 4pm from school that we didn't have a hope of making it. The pick up would have gone smoother had the kids appreciated the sense of urgency I was feeling. Abi managed to appear relatively quickly, even finding the time to get a drink from Gabbies on the way, but Izzy took ages. Having rung her 5 times I finally discovered she was waiting in the normal pick up spot rather than in the car p...

Finally Izzy's big day has come and on Thursday they both started back at St Gabs after a 4 year break. The preparations included not only packing of bags, but undoing the red streaks in Abi's hair from her few days in Wales with Mia... enough said about not doing stupid things like dying your hair 3 days before you are going back to school! I'd love to have photo's of the both of them but it was never to be - I do not have the compliant type of child that willingly stands outside of the front door on first day back to school so I can plaster photos of them 'then and now' all over social media. Instead mine generally tell me politely to get lost while hiding behind a dog or under their duvets when the phone comes out for a photo! I did manage to get one of Izzy but under sufferance and with promises of it not being shared. The blog doesn't count does it? After a slightly nervous breakfast we dropped them off and they disappeared almost immediately to t...