It's quiet here - 13/7/24

They made it!

My son Michael and Grandson Vinny made it to Boston on Thursday and got through immigration so quickly they had to wait for Mummy to arrive to drive them home to Vermont!  And so their new adventure begins with the family reunited after what has been a difficult couple of months.

And now my house seems so quiet!

These last few weeks have been hard - physically and emotionally.  But somehow we got everything done in Michael's flat and it's now ready for tenants and on the letting agents website.

We had a lovely day on Monday - we took Vinny to a Zoo and Dinosaur Park.  He's a bit big for the buggy now but we were glad we took it as he got tired from all the walking and he's much too heavy to carry far.

Hertfordshire Zoo has an animal section but it also has a Dinosaur Park with huge (and loud) animated model dinosaurs.

Vinny loves dinosaurs but he was a little unsure about all the noise and how close they seemed to be at times lol.

The zoo is only about 40 minutes away from us and we got there soon after it opened so it wasn't too busy at first although several school groups arrived mid morning.

Wednesday was Vinny's last day at his nursery and they had a leaving party for him and the children that will be starting school in September.

Looks so grown up in this photo!

And then VERY early on Thursday morning they left and many tears have been shed.

I've been trying to keep myself busy and therefore distracted and there is plenty to do in my house now - it has been sorely neglected over the past couple of months.  My vacuum cleaner was at the flat more than it was here and dust on wooden floors seems to multiply overnight!

I need to get back to walking too - I haven't done much of that lately as the scales show.  But we did get a couple of things done this week that have needed doing for.....AGES!  (Yes we did move here over 3 years ago as regular readers will know lol.)

A new toilet roll holder in the downstairs bathroom - the old one sloped down slightly and the toilet roll was often falling off onto the floor.

A new shower head in the upstairs bathroom - that doesn't spray water EVERYWHERE except where you want it.

An outdoor clothes airer finally in use.  In an ideal world the holder for this would be concreted into the ground - but neither of us are confident about doing that so I bought a long spike thing that was supposed to just push into the ground and keep the airer secure.  Sounds simple but not if your ground is very stony under the grass and you can't get the spike far enough into the ground!  I then had the brainwave of using our old parasol stand to put the supporting pole into.  Except it's so old and the  screws are rusted so it's unusable.  No problem - I'll order a new one.  Which came quickly and seemed perfect.  Except, despite the fact that it's heavy, the side of our garden can be a bit of a wind tunnel - perfect for drying the washing but not so great for keeping the airer upright!  Yes, it toppled over!  Thankfully I was only drying some very wet dirty towels at the time before I washed them properly so no harm done.  But, having got that far I was not going to be defeated.  Now the old parasol stand is on top of the new parasol stand and together they kept the airer upright yesterday and my bedding dried in no time.  It doesn't look pretty - in fact it looks pretty daft but it can easily be stored away when the grandkids are here and it works for me.  (Also there is no photographic evidence of this madness.)

It will it save on some of the tumble drying now that summer is here.  Oh,  summer seems to have been and gone!  Hopefully it will put in another appearance soon.

One of the advantages (disadvantage?) of having a little one in the house for so long is that my body clock seems to have adjusted to waking up around 6 am each day.  It hasn't had that effect on Hubby though so I'm enjoying having an hour (or 2) in the mornings when I can savour my first cup of tea, watch the birds in the garden and work out how to fill the void that my son and his family have left.

People talk about their glass being either half full or half empty and I'm often more of a half empty person but I'm really 2/3 full because my daughter and her family are close by and my other son and his family are only a car journey away.

Actually my son Matthew and his wife Amy are coming down today and staying overnight as they have tickets for Wimbledon tomorrow!  Which reminds me the bed needs making up so I'd better get a move on.

I didn't post this as a Friday's Fave Five post but I'm sure there are more than 5 things in here that I'm grateful for so I'll still be linking up with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story with other like minded bloggers.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Friday's Fave Five - 21/6/24

Oh goodness.  When people start checking up on you (thanks Terri) you know it's time to get a blog post done.  And Friday is always a good day to do that as it means taking a pause and thinking about the things we have to be thankful for.

Thanks to our host Susanne for reminding us to do this each week and share our posts here.

1)  There is light at the end of the tunnel that is "getting my son's flat ready for renting".

The last few weeks have just blurred together as we've cleared, stored, sold, or thrown out all the things in the flat.  There are still a few bits and pieces to deal with but first we have to finish all the cleaning, decorating and all the other things that are required before it can be handed over to the letting agent to take care of.  There is also a large pile of boxes almost ready for shipping to the US.

Their flight to the US is booked for the 11th July so we are counting down the days.

Some things moved from their house to ours!

Still time to spend with cousins.

2)  My son's work ethic and parenting skills.  It's been a tough time since our DIL and grandson Rory left for Vermont on 22nd May but Michael has risen to the challenge and is doing a great job single parenting Vinny and doing what needs to be done with the flat.  As you can imagine it's been hard.  Vinny misses his Mummy and brother and although being able to talk to them over the internet mostly helps it can also have the opposite effect too.  There have been lots of tears.  

We've revisited skills we haven't used for a while such as painting and also gained new ones - today between us we fitted a new timer switch to their water heater that is much more user friendly than the old one.

3)  Hubby and I reached the milestone of 40 years married a couple of weeks ago.  We had originally planned to go away for the weekend to celebrate together quietly.  Instead we took advantage of a local yard sale to try and get rid of some of our son's "stuff".  We did sell some things but our garden room and garage are now full of things that we still need to dispose of.  I'm not even going to think about that until the flat is sorted, we have our house back to ourselves and we've had a break from all the current stress.

4)  My DIL has secured a teaching job in Vermont.  She will start in August and it has the added bonus of pre-school provision for Vinny.  It's a 30 minute drive from their house but that's about half the time she used to commute here on public transport.  That's a huge weight off their shoulders as you can imagine.

5)  Easy meals, takeaways, dinners from the freezer and a grandson that really isn't too fussy.  The days start early - Vinny is usually up around 6-6.30 am and then we've been at the flat most days until it's time to collect Vinny from nursery and get home for dinner.  And of course a Hubby who cooks.  And chocolate!  Needed a lot of chocolate these last few weeks.

Of course all of this hasn't left much time for blogging and I really haven't had the headspace for it either.  

Have a good weekend all - we'll be taking a breather before getting back to the "to do" list on Monday!

Friday's Fave Five - 24/5/24

Well it is 3 weeks since I posted a blog and 4 weeks since I did a Friday Five!

It's been busy here - my son and his family moved in with us on 1st May in preparation for their move to Vermont.  There are things that need doing in the flat that meant it was easier for them to just move out and stay here for a bit.

But of course they wanted to keep some normality for the 2 children which meant Rory going to school and Vinny to nursery every day - a trek!  We've tried to help out as much as possible so I've been taking them to a bus stop in the morning leaving the house at 7 am each day.  This saved them one bus journey and made the remainder of the journey a little easier.  I've also been helping out at the flat and doing some pick ups. 

Thankfully our house is big enough to accommodate them but it has meant more planning for meals etc and a change to our lifestyle, albeit temporarily.

On Wednesday my DIL flew to Vermont with Rory.  There were a lot of tears.  They have arrived safely and will be getting the house there ready for the family and, hopefully, securing a job for my DIL.  She's a teacher so hopefully there will be a job for her although it sounds like she will have to jump through hoops to prove her experience of teaching in the UK qualifies her to resume teaching in the US.  Why do things have to be so complicated?

My son and Vinny are still here.  My son is still working for another couple of weeks and completing the things that need doing in the flat so that it's ready to rent out.  Vinny is still going to nursery.  Packing up a home to move is hard but packing up to move abroad is harder still.  And of course Vinny is sad that Mummy and Rory are not here.  Bedtime has become a bit of a challenge.

But there are still things to be grateful for:

1)  A fun day at the park on Sunday - it was a Spring Festival with lots going on and the weather was lovely - if anything slightly too warm.  I'd volunteered to help set up in the morning and then I also helped out for a bit on the stall the Foodbank had.  They had a couple of fun games they were using as fundraisers plus donation buckets and raised an amazing £800 pounds.  With more people signing up to the Foodbank we need all the funds and donations of goods we can get right now.

2)  A house that is big enough to accommodate my son and his family - we all have our own bedrooms and we're managing to cope with the extra people for meals, washing etc.

3)  Safe travels for family members that flew to far away places this week.  My daughter and her family are currently in Boston for a holiday break.

4)  A husband that cooks - with all the extra things I've been doing it's definitely a blessing to know that dinner will appear without me having to do anything.  (Well apart from a bit of planning and organising the shopping delivery lol)

5)  Resilience.  Today has been very stressful.  I won't go into details but I had to deal with a situation that was unexpected, didn't go exactly to plan and involved a lot of driving around.  But my mission is accomplished.  I'm back home and I might even pour myself a glass of wine!

Have a good weekend all - we have an extra day as Monday is a Bank holiday but of course when you're retired all days are holidays!  Hopefully I'll get a lie in but with Vinny here I might not.  He came in for a snuggle one morning this week and his feet were like blocks of ice! One way to get woken up.

See more Friday Fave Five posts here.  Thanks to our host Susanne.

A-Z Challenge 2024 - Reflections Post

Well I completed the challenge in that I posted for every letter of the alphabet and on time!  (Although some came close to the wire.)

Did I win?

I'm not sure that I did.  There's a lot going on in our house right now so I'm not sure that I gave the same amount of input as I've done in some of the previous years of taking part.  I certainly didn't find time to check out too many new blogs but I did try to visit those of people who had visited mine.

Thank you to all those who did, especially if you left a comment.  Apologies if I missed getting back to you.

Thanks also to the A to Z Team (Arlee Bird, J Lenni Dorner, Zalka Csenge Virág, John Holton, Jayden R Vincente, and Ronel) who supported everyone through the challenge and do such a great job every year.

There were lots of suggestions from the team of what to consider for this post (read more here) but if I tried to address all of them this post would probably never see the light of day.

For me one of the main reasons for doing the challenge is to try and keep my blog active and interesting and to stretch my writing.  Well I need to work on the being active part as this is the first post I've done since completing the challenge!  I'm also not sure that I really stretched myself as there was very little forward planning done apart from drafting out what each letter would be.  Many of the posts were written either on the day or maybe a day or two in advance.

But, having said all that I expect to be doing it all over again next year!