Catching up to July 30th

So it’s been a little while since my last blog - but what a couple of weeks!!! This is a bunch of stuff I wrote while I was without internet access. More updates to come.

A flying trip to the US - there and back for four days. Trip was uneventful but a bit of shopping done while I was there. I managed to lose a new pair of sunglasses within one day of purchase. HB had prepared the shopping list, including specifying that I need “1 x pr maternity jeans; 1 x pr maternity work trousers” Quite funny really. All who hadn’t seen me for a few weeks in the States commented that I looked really well and pregnancy suited me (it would want to - I waited long enough for it!!!!!)

Arrived back in the UK on July 25, what a great day! We completed the purchase of our house at 10.00am. At last we could start getting on with our lives. Next step - picking up Rosie! We collected her from quarantine and went straight to a park. we were a bit worried she would have lost a lot of her discipline (plus the fact that she hadn’t been able to run free in a park in the US for three years) five minutes out of jail and she was back to her old self, we were so happy! It was tome for her now to be reunited with HB’s mum and dad, (also known as Rosie’s grandparents). With the moving and everything to organise, keeping her with us would have been even more unsettling for her, so we headed off to Hungerford where we met Ma and Pa and went for a nice pub meal in the country. Rosie was really and truly back to her old self, playing catch with a ball and then stretching out on the grass under the table as we ate; her doggy smile was back!

Then it was back to Windsor for us and packing up the flat. Saturday morning we hired a truck and headed off with our boxes to our new home (we did manage to have a non-airconditioned truck on what was the hottest day of the year to date!) It was so exciting arriving. I was a bit apprehensive, I’d only been in the house twice and was nervous that it wouldn’t live up to my memory of it. It was hard for us both not to go running from room to room like kids on Christmas day, we tried desperately hard to be grown up about it and failed miserably - big grins were in abundant supply!

We’d decided that we’d just unpack our boxes to the garage and then head back to Windsor to take the truck back - our first night in the house would be on Sunday. By the time we got back it was 7.00 so fish and chips in order. We were up at first light to get back because all we wanted to do was get on with it!

Sunday was spent shopping and cleaning - not much to clean really but just part of making the house our own. The kitchen was much nicer and bigger than we remembered which was a bonus. Of course our first night in the house would not have been complete without a bottle of bubbly, once again we rolled of the Veuve Cliquot to celebrate a momentous occasion in our life together.

Monday was the start of a truly manic week. Brian the painter arrived at 7.30 (7am every day since). We were having the whole house repainted internally. The hard part was arranging the painter round the other things that were organized (carpet laying, telephone techs etc) Brian has been decorating houes since Adam was a boy, he sure has some stories!

All of the neighbours have been dropping in, everyone is SO friendly!!! Anything we need just give a holler.

One downside is lack of internet connectivity - it is like having our arms and legs cut off. I’m working from my smartphone and then ducking into the nearest town when I need to send of documents. A real pain but fingers crossed all will be resolved by the beginning of next week. It took us a few days but we finally got the phones sorted out, what BT couldn’t/wouldn’t fix, a terrific local couple (Paul and Wendy) fixed and tidied for us.

HB’s main priority was making sure he could run his speaker cables under the carpet so Thursday night was spent on our hands and knees on the concrete floor taping the cable down. The boards that the carpet tacks to were already down, if I pricked my hand once I must have done it ten times, but is was worth it as now the carpet is laid over the cables and HB will be a happy chappy!

The garden is going to be awesome. It’s pretty overgrown at the moment, lets face it, who wants to spend time in the garden weeding and doing maintenance when they are selling the house and have another thousand things to think about. But Guy, the previous owner was kind enough to leave us with a bunch of local contacts so we have already arranged for someone to come in and get on top of the grass, weeds and overgrown trees & plants. That will mean when we do finally start playing/working in the garden we will be improving it rather than just trying to get on top of it.

Only a few more rooms to do insofar as painting and carpeting, its like a new house! Watching it transform has been exciting, all the time I can’t help thinking what a fantastic place for Blobby to grow up in! I think back to when HB and I moved into our first home together in Haslemere. Weeks spent doing DIY - ugh (it’s the only time we ever really fight is when we do DIY!) There is no way we would have got through so much in our first week if we were doing this ourselves. We really are very fortunate to be in a position to do it this way (thank you stock options!)