Life has been a bit more of a hectic blur than usual recently which explains why it’s been a disgustingly long time since my last post. I just flicked through the notes section on my phone and found the plan for an ‘end of the summer holiday’ post that I never got round to writing and now we’re in October (how the hell has that happened?!) it does feel a bit late to write that one up. So, I thought I’d just do a little catch up post incorporating some highlights from that intended post with the snippets from the whirlwind that’s been the last month or so.

The summer holidays bought their usual dose of chaos and sadly not much actual summer. We enjoyed folk week in the town which included a visit from Uncle Oli and Auntie Faye. There was a lot of dancing, some drinking and plenty of crafting from Polly. Clara did have an absolute crisis on the last day of the festival though when she dropped her treasured Sweep cuddly toy in the river. He was heroically rescued by one of the trawler guys on a fishing rod which provided quite a scene.

After the festival finished we had a bit of an up and down remainder of the holiday. There was a bit of a slump in the middle where I felt like I was the one who’d fallen in the river. We pulled things back after having an adventure day when I dragged them up into the woods for a mammoth walk all the way along to the coastal path and down to the beach- they walked several miles and it was one of our best days in the whole holiday.

Sadly, the next day we went back down with a crash when I got the news my Grandad had passed away. He had been poorly but we were due up at the end of the holiday so thought we would make it up in time (back in the homeland of Suffolk). Unfortunately, he deteriorated very quickly and there was no chance I would make it up in time to say goodbye, plus the kids needed me here so I didn’t even try and make the journey up. He was a very proud and at times a very stubborn man, but he was also full of love and loved making the kids laugh. I’m not sure if even now I’ve fully got my head round the fact that he’s not with us anymore, but I know my stubborn streak is from him (Henry likes to remind me of this) so really he’ll always be around as my stubbornness seems to grow with each year I age!

In fact Polly gave me some wonderful food for thought on my birthday at the very start of the holiday with this gem: “Isn’t is funny how we celebrate birthdays… it’s just celebrating another year closer to death.” Thanks child, maybe don’t write that in anyone’s birthday card.

A few other highlights included watching Mama Mia 600 times with Clara giving us a concert performance each time- it did make us laugh that Super Trooper kept turning into Twinkle twinkle little star, she clearly just needs some more practice. She gave us another laugh when playing down by the river and a butterfly spooked her which caused her to fall in the river and then shout her summer catch phrase of “Oh heck!”

We did enjoy our little trip up to Suffolk when we did go though. We had a hilarious visit to a little farm where we got to feed the goats, had great fun blackberry picking and Clara turned herself into a smurf with the help of a bubble-gum ice cream!

The start of the new school year has also bought us into our next chapter of parenting as our lockdown baby started reception. She still feels so little to be at school but at the same time she was so ready to start and is absolutely loving going. She skips in with a massive smile on her face and last Friday didn’t even say goodbye!

This shift in our week has meant that the kitchen has benefitted from a massive purge clean, I spent a day putting up bunk beds and reorganising the kids bedroom and I’ve also been able to get back out walking. Although I also did some falling down on my last big walk when I slipped on the loose rocks in the woods, up a hill, in the middle of nowhere. The bruise on my arse was absolutely spectacular and kept growing for the next week. I also had an incident where I misjudged what looked like a perfectly safe grassy field- it was in fact a massive bog where I ended up ankle deep with again not a soul in sight.

The last couple of weekends have been jam-packed with a car show, the town carnival and the start of the science festival. There’s also been plenty of ‘back-to-school-tiredness-tantrums’ and a week long stint off school for the big one when a stomach bug knocked her sideways, so it’s not all been Instagram picture worthy smiles and joy.

Then yesterday, Henry and I celebrated our ‘together anniversary.’ We ‘celebrated’ by putting the kids to bed and cackling our way through one of favourite series’ to binge watch together- Motherland. 16 years is a long time, and it’s even more scary to think that after next year’s I’ll have spent more of my life with him than without him. That makes me feel even older than when Seb called me an old witch!

Anyhow that concludes the highlights of the last couple of months. I’ll try not to leave it that long again but we all know that’s bullshit and the next post will likely be a Christmas one! Although we’ve already started on the Christmas films so actually that might not be as far away as you might assume.