House Update - It's a Good One!

No news is good news as the saying goes. And the lack of reports from me regarding the sale of our Henley house confirm this, for tomorrow (fingers crossed...) we complete!

Hubby has been working hard for the last couple of weeks emptying the loft and sheds, tidying the garden, taking rubbish to the tip and bringing lots and lots of boxes and all sorts of stuff we didn't know we needed and have managed to live without for quite some time over to this house which is now bursting at the seams (time for some serious de-cluttering.) This afternoon we made our final visit to the house to say a quick goodbye; not a hint of sadness on my part, even though it was the first house we bought together. We haven't lived there for over two years now so I found it hard to feel any attachment to the place; I'm glad we moved out as there would absolutely not have been enough room for us all since DC arrived, plus the area was always a little too noisey for our liking and we found one of our next door neighbours a little annoying. Sounds like such a great place, eh?!

Now it just remains for us to find another house... Easier said than done when we can't even decide on a location.

Day Trip to Dunster

Today's holiday outing was a trip to Dunster, a gorgeous Somerset town full of wonderful buildings dating as far back as the 15th century.

The Yarn Market at the top of the High Street dates back to the 16th century and parts of the castle which overlooks the town are mediaeval.

All in all, it's a very pretty little place and, the icing on the cake, are the lovely shops dotted around!

I'm Still Here!

I can hardly believe how long it's been since I last posted on here; excuses? Hmm, busy with work, busy with DC and then I just found that the longer it went without posting, the harder it was to get back into it. Does that make sense? There seemed like so many things I could write about that there were too many things and I didn't know where to start.

But I have to get back into posting on here, so here I am! At the moment we are enjoying a family holiday in Devon:

Tuesday we went had a trip to lovely Dulverton and then on to Exmoor to scatter my Dad's ashes (hope it's not illegal - please don't report me to the authorities!)

Wednesday we went to Teignmouth and DC had his first trip to the beach; not hugely successful from his point of view - everytime he touched the sand with hands or feet it made him cry! But we enjoyed ourselves - picnic on the beach, a walk along the prom with an ice cream, then losing some money on the pier ("better than Vegas" as hubby said!) Then we drove to Totnes and had a walk up and down Fore Street - a very impressive collection of shops; I didn't realise quite how "alternative" Totnes was, lots of 'green'-ness going on. Very nice it was too.

Today we went to South Molton for the market; a very nice little town, despite the rain!

News of DC: he's now staanding up and "cruising" a little. A whole new dimension to his world, and ours!

DC Turns One!

My darling little boy has turned one! I can hardly believe how quickly the year has gone by. We had a little get-together for him at Grandma and Grandad's up in Wigan; Granny came along too, all the way from Bristol. On the day before his birthday we had some professional photos taken to mark the occasion; most of them have turned out really well but there are a few corkers where certain family members (ie me) are displaying a sight too many chins or pulling gormless faces. I'll try and upload a few for your viewing pleasure some time soon. Until then, here are a few shots from the birthday itself, starting with the birthday cake which hubby made with his own fair hands - impressive, eh?!Here we have the fabulous birthday buffet - cream cake anyone?And here's the birthday boy on his throne, tucking into a wotsit and a ham sandwich - birthday fare at its finest!And here he is checking out his birthday trike.Opening a pressie.Playing with the string on his new click-clack crocodile toy; next year I shall save money and just buy him a ball of twine.And yet another pressie to open - lucky little chap.

On This Day In History

At almost this precise moment, I was on my way to hospital ready to be induced. If I knew then, what I know now... I'd do it all again in a heartbeat! But, honestly, if you'd told me this time last year that I'd have to wait another three days for DC to arrive, I'd have been more than a little surprised.

But, as long as I could still have a coffee, I'd have coped....

Don't Want to Speak Too Soon...

and jinx it, but we accepted an offer on our house on Friday! Yeeeeeehaaaw! Fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly, quickly and to plan.

On the same day we also made an offer on another house in Henley; the offer was turned down but neither of us is too upset, we are willing to bide our time and play the long game as we don't really love the house. It's a 'head' house, rather than a 'heart' house, meaning that (internally) the house has lots of potential to be made into something quite special (as long as we have the funds) and at the end of all the work it would hopefully make us a (fair) profit when we sell it on; it's also in a good location, has a fair size garden and is in a good school catchment area (should we be thinking of it as a medium to long-term home.) However, it's not an attractive house and from the outside never will be; it doesn't make our hearts skip a beat when we think it could be ours; it's semi-detached when we really would prefer detached and although the plot isn't a bad size, it's an odd shape and not as large as we would really like - not much room for DC's goalposts...

So the head says: buy the house because once the work is done it will be a really good size house with a fair size garden in a good location in Henley and when we come to sell it it may help us move up the property ladder a little further.

And the heart says: for the same money you could buy a detached cottage in an acre somewhere in the South West.


HELP!

Eggscellent Work, Girls

Gail and Sarah-luv (the chooks) have earned themselves a reprieve. Hubby, aka the chicken-whisperer, had a 'word' with them back in November/December time; they were warned that if we didn't see some results by May of this year (by which time they would have been enjoying free board and lodgings for 11 months) then necks would be wrung. Harsh, but true. We didn't get them as pets, we got them to supply us with eggs.

Back in December, you may remember, the Family W took a little jaunt to NYC. While we were away we had a friend pop in to check on the chooks; the first day she looked in on them, there in the nesting box was an egg. Knowing the history of our non-producing chooks, she thought we'd planted it there so we could be sure she really was going round to feed and water them. As if we would do such a thing!

Anyhoo, that was the only egg laid in the entire week we were away and we all thought it was a fluke. But then, slowly but surely, that one egg increased to two, three, four and we are now at the point of full capacity in the fridge's egg compartment. Between them the chooks are laying around ten eggs a week and DC has discovered that fresh scrambled or poached eggs are one of his absolute favourite meals (luckily.)
If anyone else is having trouble with non-laying chooks, Hubby the Chicken Whisperer is available to hire at very reasonable rates.

Party Central

It's non-stop partying in the land of the NCT babies. Obviously, since we all took a childbirth course together, we all had our babies fairly close together this time last year. There's just over four weeks between the first (Samuel) and the last (DC - bringing up the rear...), with Sophie, Darcey, Daisy, Eleanor, Molly, Wilbur and Louis in between.

DC and I went to Samuel's birthday party on the 19th of Feb; our first ever 1st birthday party and a good time was had by all. The party bag we brought home was a big hit with a) hubby, who ate the slice of birthday cake that was inside b) me, as I've bagsied the chocolate lollipop and c) DC who will, no doubt, have hours of fun watching mummy and daddy blowing bubbles for him and winding up the swimming bath toy.

Yesterday was supposed to be Daisy's party but, as is the way with little tots, she was poorly and the party has been postponed til next Friday. Today we are off en famille to Darcey's party, and tomorrow it's Eleanor's. Like I said, it's party central round these parts.

Due Date

Would you believe it's a whole year ago today that DC was due? But, because he was so overdue, it's still another 17 days until his 1st birthday! So, this time last year, hubby and I were on tenterhooks thinking that at any moment we could become parents. Little did we know just how much longer we'd be such close companions with those tenterhooks. Bless his little heart, he clearly takes after me when it comes to timekeeping.

It's Official - I'm a Quitter

At the end of January our (mini) Book Club chose The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt as our next offering. I went out and bought it along with two other books as Waterstone's were having one of their perennial 3-for-2 offers, and also as a small treat to myself for losing a stone in weight (yay me!)

So, I started the book and enjoyed the first ten pages or so, then something really minor annoyed me and it all went downhill from there. 150 pages later (just about a quarter of the way through), I had to admit defeat. This is only the third book that I can ever remember actually giving up on, the other two being Emma by Jane Austen and Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, both of which I still have on my bookshelf and sincerely hope to return to one day. But I dislike The Children's Book so much that I've already sold it on eBay. I had a sudden epiphany while reading it that life is too short to slog your way through something that you actually have a choice over, and here I had the choice to give up or keep going with a book that I really wasn't enjoying and was almost coming to resent giving my time to, and so I chose to stop. To Quit.

My name is Justine and I'm a Book Quitter.

That's not my only confession. I'm also a Book Buyer and a Book Hoarder. I blame the Oxfam Book Shop - since one opened in Reading and another in Henley (several years back, now) I just can't help but pop in and see what catches my eye. It's not like I need any more books, but it's like an addiction. There are 126 unread books on my bookshelf. Let's say it takes a month to read each one, I have 10.5 years worth of books to get through. No wonder hubby refused to buy me any more for Christmas.

Anyway, I've now moved on to The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith, number whoknowswhat in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, which I love. I won't be quitting this one.