Making the most of the weekend

What an amazing holiday weekend it has been, 3 days of wall to wall sunshine, and the forcast is for more to come.  September seems to be summer most years now so at least something to look forward to and enjoy, though the nights are drawing in fast.

After two days of sorting and packing - still plenty to do - we gave ourselves a day off yesterday and went for a cycle ride into St Ives, then on to Hemingford and met some of the family for a drink and a chat.

I had a wander around the garden when we got back to check out the state of play with the apples - there are lots

There is also plenty of colour too

Looking forward to seeing what we have in the new - very much smaller - garden, not long now

The saga continues

Whoever ranked moving house up there below bereavement got it about right.  This past week has been frustrating and emotional in more ways than one.  Wrangles over a completion date between the two parties below us, then when finally everyone is ready to exchange a solicitor goes awol.  I guess he decided he'd rather slip away early for the holiday weekend.  We are now left waiting til Tuesday, but at least have a moving date of 14 September, though can put nothing into place until exchange has happened.  Sigh.

Here's a picture to make you smile, this child knows no fear

There is something else that we have been keeping to ourselves, our eldest daughter and her family are heading for pastures new, starting a new life in France.  You can follow their adventure here.  We will be sad to see them go, but plan on spending as much time as possible with them in France to help them achieve their dream.  As you can imagine that would be hard with us both working, so to that end we will be retiring at the end of October and making good use of our time both there and at home (we have so much to do on our new place!).  I'm trying hard not to think about them being in a different country.  If they had moved to Scotland or right down in the west country it would take as long to visit them.  I guess we have just got used to them being 45 minutes away.  I know that lots of people have families spread all over the world, so France is just a hop across the channel, or rather under, don't do boats!

My knitting has been going slowly whilst we try to sort and pack up the house, but I have got my Mdina cardigan finished.  I have also cast on the first of 4 Christmas sweaters for the grandchildren, that should be fun!  I have made all the "bits" for them all whilst waiting for the yarn to arrive.  I'll share as I progress.

So that is our news for now.  I hope you all have a great holiday weekend, looks like the weather is going to be good.  We will be sorting and packing, then finally getting round to an afternoon tea which we were gifted last year, I think we deserve it after the week we've had.........

Holding your breath

It has felt like we have been holding our breath this past week.

We returned home on Saturday from a lovely family holiday.  I won't say we were relaxed, but we had a fun, hectic, noisy time, HOT, one where you get to spend quality time with the whole family in one place.

On returning there was the usual post to go through, a few enquiries from the solicitor re the house sale, nothing much. Monday email from solicitor arranging a meeting to sign contracts, then comes the call from the agent.  Our buyers have lost their buyers at the 11th hour, shock, disappointment, all those plans put in place, now on hold........  I have to hand it to our agent, she pulled one out of the bag.  She contacted all the previous viewers that had offered on their house and fortunately one of them was still interested, to cut a long story short, everything is back on again as of yesterday.  I have to confess I had a few tears, I hadn't realised how tense I had been all week, so it was back to the packing.  I guess we are a few weeks further away from moving than we would have been, but as long as it happens we don't mind.

Here are a few photos from the holiday and this past week........ and breathe..........

Laurie had a birthday

Stu cycled Mount Ventoux THREE times in one day!!!

Bit of knitting

Doesn't look impressed does he?

Helping Pops