Not jumping for joy

I hardly know where to begin with today so perhaps I'll just leap to the end. In a bizarre Waltons meets the grandparents of Charlie and the Chocolatw Factory me, Carl and the kids are lying in two giant double beds next to each other to form one humungous room of sleep. It wasn't in the plan but it does fulfill Jackson's long held wish that we all slept in the same room. Possibly after three nights he might change his stance on that one.

Despite a very early start the day was going extraordinarily to plan, if not even a little ahead of it, when we tried our usual route to get to our house in Spain, down a dry river bed, and realised it was neither a dry river bed nor a route to our house. There is an alternative that involves a slightly steep drop but it seemed worth a try. It's only a few hundred metres but by the time we were at the bottom we had a flat tyre from hitting a stone dislodged from a dry stone wall. And the river was in full flow here anyway. Fast forward several hours and me and the kids had been rescued and deposited in a hotel by a kindly friend and eventually Carl and the car had been rescued and returned to us. Potential for huge rows with car hire company as jack was bust and probably wrong size for car and wrong nut on the hub cap meant a simple tyre change needed to involve the car being towed up a garage.

Anyway, as I have regularly spouted to the kids, who have been blooming marvellous all things considered, let's focus on what's good about this and not all the things that we can't do anything about. So yes, I am very sad that it seems unlikely we will get to the house at all. However, we are all together in a very nice hotel which has an indoor swimming pool as warm as a bath and a spa.

The picture is Carl investigating the first part of the river bed to see if we could get up it. In case anyone is thinking that the whole notion of having a house you can only access down a dry river bed is bonkers then yes, you are more than likely right. In our defence Spain isn't known for being the wettest of countries and this is the first time in almost 5 years we have had this problem. It has been raining non-stop since mid-December which is unheard of. We need to think about whether it's a chance event and does it just mean we don 't come in February.

But thoughts for another day. For now we shall enjoy experiencing the town from a very different, more central perspective, not doing any shopping or cooking and playing in the pool. It's been a very long day but the stuff that memories are made of :-)

Night all
Lesley x