Happy pre-birthday

I took four pictures today: 2 were of some odd-looking gadget on our fireplace whilst the chimney was swept and tested and 2 were of Carl blowing out the candles on his cake. The settings were better for the former but somehow this is the picture that seems right. So here it is.

Today was a frenzy of running around at what felt like a million miles an hour. Carl feels the same. So you'd think we'd be excited about our opportunity to slow down again for a couple of days with a trip away tomorrow. Instead at the moment we are torn between feeling like we are going to miss the kids too much and feeling like that's rubbish. J would rather we didn't go but is looking forward to seeing Grandma and is taking it in his stride. A got quite upset at bedtime. It's not like we haven't done this before but she is still not quite settled into the new term and the timing is perhaps not great. I think we might move our anniversary. She did cheer up when we bribed her with promises of a goldfish (well, two actually as it turns out Jackson doesn't want one in case it dies when we have to leave it for the day to go to a chess tournament) - my brother suggested we would come back and they will be named Lesley and Carl and we will have been replaced.

We're all tired. I am hopeful that the morning will bring a different hue.

On a brighter note, the cake went down very well and we now have a chimney pot (not having known that we didn't have one previously) so we can get ourselves a real fire and not be cold this winter - hurrah!

Lesley x