A Great Weekend

We had a lovely weekend as Uncle Steve and Anya came to stay. Angus especially had a lovely time as Uncle Steve and Anya wanted to see Hadrian's Wall - a favourite activity of his. Bonus - Uncle Steve actually gets around to taking lots of photos! Hurrah!

So here for your pleasure and delight are Steve's photos used without his permission and copied off facebook. They are of Angus and a walk we did on Saturday along Hadrian's Wall. Angus was delighted and wrapped up all warm is his hat and gloves (note the predominance of red!) and keen to show off what has now become his wall, to Steve and Anya. There is also one of Steve himself!

It was lovely having you to stay: Angus is already wanting to reciprocate and visit London.

You know you have a boy child when...

he spends the afternoon playing with his four-year-old friend and the game consists of burping and "gunning" each other with (fortunately imaginary) pooh.

Back In the Land of the Living!

Finally, six weeks after moving house, we have the internet! I should probably blog some time to discuss just how socially-excluding life can be without the internet, and isn't it sad the we have become like this, and conversely just how amazing that we can keep in touch so easily with so many people, and so on. But I won't. I have just dealt with 100 emails and now need to go to bed and sleep.

Suffice it to say that moving was an adventure involving deep snow, frozen brakes, intrepid in-laws, ill children, long drives and amazing friends who stepped in just when we needed them. Christmas was in America and involved deep snow, family, no illness, skiing, and a wonderful time, and we have come back to no snow (except the heaps piled in corners yet to melt), my Mum staying for a few days, a second Christmas, and now we have the internet.

Life is moving on and I will share some photos with you soon. This weekend we are staying with my Dad who hasn't seen Isla and Angus since September so photos won't be until next week. In the meantime, Happy New Year and here's to a better year blogging than last year!

We are here at last!

I am currently at a friend's house, Ken's best man lives four miles away from us, as we don't have internet so this will be a quick update and photos will have to follow as I forgot to bring the camera memory card.

Let me start by saying that I cannot recommend moving with two ill children while you have a temperature of 103/39.5 during the worst snow for the last forty years. The van was nearly four hours late, the ramp kept icing up, I was too ill to do much prior to packing and pretty useless on the day, Ken managed to get a paternity day off and came home 10.00 the evening before, and friends from church and Mum saved the day. They stayed in shifts all day and cleaned the house through, or looked after the children. At six we were waved off, collected Isla from Mum, fed her and ourselves and finally arrived at midnight.

Ken's parents had decided that they would help us move in but that staying with us would be too complicated and probably add to the confusion. They rented a holiday house five miles from our house it was a haven! When they heard that we were going to be so late they arranged with the owner for us all to stay there for the night. We were joined by Mark, an absolute stalwart, who took time off work and drove up from Norfolk in the snow just to help us move in. He did the same helping us move to and from Germany. Either his life is just too dull and even shifting boxes seems like a good idea, or he is a wonderful friend. I think it is probably the latter. The holiday home was bliss - from dark night and cold snow to a warm, wood-stove-warmed living room with a cup of tea. A fresh bed, warm shower and not a box in site.

Actually, there weren't any boxes in site. They were meant to arrive at 8.00 the next morning but as the men had finished so late the day before, they couldn't set off until the following morning and consequently didn't arrive until lunchtime. Irronically, it took them the same amount of time to drive from Derby to Newcastle as it did the day before to drive from Derby to Macclesfield! The van was unloaded, some boxes were unpacked and we withdrew to the holiday house again somewhat exhausted.

I rapidly came to the conclusion that with unpacking it takes 10% of the time to unpack 90% of the boxes and 90% of the time to work out what to do with the final 10%. Two weeks after moving in we are mostly unpacked. There are things we have decided to leave in boxes, like the best china and most of my books, but we are starting to feel settled. We have had a couple of annoying trips to Ikea, (one where the fire alarm went off for three and a half hours and we had to wait in the carpark. Then the child care place argued that since Angus had already been in child care he couldn't come back in! As I had dropped him off and not even walked across the foyer before the alarm started, they eventually relented, but not without an argument), bought random items that we needed in order to shape our stuff to the available storage, and are now feeling that our things have homes. Last night we put up the Christmas tree but I haven't yet written Christmas cards. Angus has started nursery and is already talking about his friends and been in the school nativity. Most of the Christmas presents have been bought and life is starting to develop a pattern. I may even start to like it up here.... That would be turn up for the books.

I will keep you up to date as and when internet allows or offers of internet are given. If I don't write again before Christmas, have a good one and remember Christmas is not about presents, fun though they are, it is a birthday party.

Goodbyes - Positive, and not so.

Written on Friday and not finished, but I will post anyway. We currently have a combination of fevers, colds, eye infections, chesty coughs, runny noses and about 1 foot of snow. Not the best conditions for moving. Where we will be moving to currently has a blizzard. The boss of removal men suggested they take huskies...

Anyone who has moved house and relocated, not just moved within a town or area but further afield, will be aware of the limbo that accompanies almost everything. Although intellectually you are aware that sometime next week all will change, life on a daily basis is still continuing: laundry still needs doing, the dog still needs walking, Angus still needs taking to school, and so on. Yet, when planning things, discussing events that will be happening over the next few weeks and so on, there is the repetition of, "But of course, this doesn't affect you," or reminding myself that this is not something I need to concern myself with as I will be living elsewhere. In effect, you start being disconnected and excluded from your current life.

We haven't started packing yet although we have done some re-arranging and a bit of rationalising, but on the whole our house looks little different from normal. To be honest, if Ken resigned his new job next week, we would carry on as before and nothing would have changed significantly. And yet, next week all will change: We will still be the same family but in a different place, needing to recreate routines, new places to go, to shop, to walk the dog, and so on in a new house with new patterns of living.

About the only thing making this seam even vaguely real is the need to say goodbye. I know in my head that there are some people whom I have grown to admire, enjoy the company of, respect, even love, who I will possibly never see again. Grasping the emotional reality of that is elusive, but practically I can at least reflect on the good times we have had together, thank them for being a part of my life and hope that at some stage our lives will cross again. Will some tenacity and good planning with some that will happen, but with many, I know it won't.

Last night I attended my last Mountain Rescue Team training session. Being a part of a MRT is a strange beast - some people assume things about your mountaineering ability that is complete myth (although you may actually aspire to it!), others assume that you are just a rather melodramatic rambler. The reality is that you are neither - you are a keen hillwalker with time and the inclination to help others. The adrenaline you get on a call out, opportunity to play (rarely) with helicopters, and the satisfaction you get from knowing or at least hoping, that you have made a positive impact on some stranger's life, are all plusses, although sometimes elusive. The team are a great bunch of people all connected by the hillwalking helpful approach. Consequently they are usually a sociable bunch, mostly friendly and accompanied by the usual mix of internal politics and personality clashes that you get with any cross-section of society. But I do love hanging out with them on a Thursday evening! I have thoroughly enjoyed at least 95% of my time with the team and I will miss them. Even though I have seen few outside of an MR activity, I will still miss them and can certainly say that I am grateful for having had their input in my life.

The not so positive good bye was at the vet's yesterday. Angus's rabbit Snow White developed a tooth abscess a few weeks ago and despite the vet's and Mum's (Snow White lives at my Mum's house) best attempts, by yesterday it had spread to her jaw. The kindest thing was to let her go. Angus and I went to the vets and we held her and said goodbye, thanking her for the fun we had and the joy that she had brought to our lives. Later Angus and I buried her in Mum's garden. It was a sad time for him and he cried a bit but in typical child fashion, then started talking about getting another rabbit when we move to the house we will be borrowing.

Hopefully more of the goodbyes will be more like the first and not so traumatic.