The Catch Up Post

I fully expected to be sitting here waxing lyrical about my spa day last week, but the universe had other plans. I started vomiting almost as soon as my eyes opened so, sadly, it had to be cancelled. Sad for me, who had woken with the Christmas morning feeling that one gets upon waking on a much anticipated day, but sadder for my poor sister, who lost out on her birthday treat. It will be rebooked ASAP but I'm feeling understandably hacked off at the loss of my first child-free break since about April (as well as still slightly nauseous) 

It's been a while since I did a general life catch up and a lot has happened in the meantime. Obviously we have been on our FIRST FAMILY HOLIDAY (woo hoo!) which I wrote about here and I have to say, the first week back was a major bummer. Forrest was a complete nightmare - having had all of our attention for a full week and precious little in the way of a routine, it was a shock to the system to wake up on the Monday morning and find that life was back to normal. He vented his frustration with tears and tantrums, which wasn't much fun for Mummy, let me assure you. 

The holiday itself was fabulous and just what we needed. It meant a 2.30am start to get us to the airport on time and despite arriving in France at 10am, we were told that we couldn't officially 'move in' to the house until 4pm as it was being cleaned. But we took a chance, had a delicious lunch in Issegeac and arrived early anyway and by 2.30pm we were near-comatose by the pool

We're not the most sociable couple in the world, we love being at home with Forrest asleep upstairs and prefer to keep ourselves to ourselves rather than be around people, given a choice. So renting a private house was perfect for us - we got to do what we liked, when we liked and within our little family unit. The house was in a rural area and was old and full of character, as well as having its own pool and a huge garden with a stream running through it. The stream was full of fish and had a resident beaver. Matt came in one afternoon and said 'I've just seen something in the stream - it's either a beaver or a giant rat'. I went to investigate that evening, consulted Google and informed him that we had a Eurasian Beaver in the garden. 'A what? A Eurovision winner?' Cue much hilarity, that joke ran and ran as you can imagine. 'Remember that time we went to France and found a Eurovision winner in the garden?' Ho ho ho.

We treated the house like our home, cooking most of our meals rather than going out and spending our evenings lazing around by the pool, soaking up the glorious sun, reading books in companionable silence and playing boules. We visited a couple of markets and boulangeres but that was about it. It really was perfect, especially as we were away during Heatwave Week and had temperatures up to 40 degrees!

My pictures don't really do the house justice but if you want to see more - including the fabulous beamed bedrooms - you can do so at the Vintage Travel website (who were brilliant and I can recommend them without hesitation) We loved it so much that we have already put our names down for a week there next year.

What else happened in June? We had our first family trip to Brocklesby Country Fair, our local estate puts on a fair every year and it was Forrest's first time. It holds mixed memories for me, being the place where I once agreed to give a gundog demonstration and made a bit of a hash of it, as well as dropping my brand new iPhone into a portaloo (on the same day - it wasn't a great day) but it had all the ingredients for a very happy Forrest - animals, tractors, food - so we dressed him like a complete goon and went along with my sister and her little family and our Dad

He loved it. There was also The Lincolnshire Show the week after, which he also loved. Then there was France and now we are at home and the weather is rubbish, July is definitely not living up to June's example.

We have had a team of painters in at home, who have painted and oiled all of the exterior doors and windows as well as finishing off our new bedroom, which has been a fantastic boost. We just need to get the second fix electrics sorted and a carpet and we can move in! Matt has suggested waiting until we have a new bed to put in there but ... I'm not sure I can wait. The cinema room is also now boarded out and plastered and we're planning to slap some paint on the walls this weekend, so work on the house is moving along again. A good thing as our new sofa has been made and delivered to the store, where it has languished in a warehouse for the last month. I've assured them that they can deliver it soon, but how soon is anyone's guess ...

In other domestic news, Forrest's lovely Montessori nursery closed this week. It was a bit of a shock, we received a letter last Thursday telling us that the nursery had gone into liquidation and then BAM, Tuesday was his last day. Not a great deal of notice for the unlucky sods who have their children in full time childcare and are therefore without childcare and terribly out of pocket, having paid up for a month in advance, but absolutely horrendous for the poor staff, who only found out mere hours before us parents did. Credit to them though, they put on a lovely leaving party on the last day with bouncy castles and a party tea, it was quite emotional really. So after a lot of running around with my hands in the air and visiting unsuitable nurseries I have found a really wonderful one in town which can take Forrest for two full days a week from September. He's never done a full day in nursery before but it's not worth the 30 mile round trip to leave him for four hours so this is what we will do. I just need to figure out how I'm going to get any work done before September, especially as I have the two companies' VAT quarter ends looming large. I feel sick just thinking about it so I'm trying not to.

What have you been up to this month?