(Bella Spring cleaning her room)

So how was Easter?? Not that it’s quite over here yet…kids go back to school tomorrow..but it’s been – needed to be – a quiet, simple time for us just gently shuffling to the waltz of life with two steps forward…three steps back.

But it’s been a hurrah for moral depravity – early on we lost all the electrical sockets upstairs due to a fault with our tumble dryer which took a while to track down…which meant no washer, no dryer..no phone..no alarm clocks..no computer.  Such a shame.  I personally saw it as proof of the after life and a neon message from above to say opt out: If you were a decorator, you’d have all day to paint. If you were a cleaner, you’d be left to remove 6 months of builder’s dust.  If you were a nanny, that would be your job.  If you were a writer, at least you’d have a job title.  To do all four at once is quite frankly disgraceful and flashy…give up now. So I gave up blogging..

Progress after the builders has been made – the hall is now painted, the cellar is nearly done, but the house is still in great upheaval, mainly because rooms can’t be sorted until various cupboards are painted (which is a god forsaken task and takes time) and carpets are down (due end of April) at which point the spare room can be unpacked.

But actual Easter was delicious: 32 members of the family together at my brother and sister-in-laws for the long weekend.  Pretty special. We have three big traditions: Decorating hard boiled eggs for the ‘best dressed egg’ competition.

Charlotte with her trophy! An egg hunt in the garden…

Followed by an egg race using newspaper thwackers to hit said eggs around a cunningly designed course, avoiding the moving obstacle of hungry dogs. Old, blind, Molly wasn’t such a issue…but Olly ran away with Charlie’s egg..there were tears..

All the cousins together..

The period also coincided with The Husband working ridiculous hours (back at 2..up at 6). For most people (read me) this would eventually result in a weeping, gelatinous heap in a far corner.  He goes the other way – the insert for the cutlery drawer? sorted.  A new recycling bin? found and ordered.  Someone to pick up the backlog of washing and ironing after socket disaster? I let out an unprovoked shriek when they appeared at the door.  The missing knob to the le cruset dish? We now have a new one.  I’m thinking pace and recharge whilst he’s spinning faster and faster, I’m just Hoping I’ll be in a fit state to catch him when he falls…

And then I went to write this post..and discovered he had updated the whole computer ‘to make it run faster’..so much so it didn’t even recognise the printer..it took me twenty minutes to download the new software to get them speaking again.  I went to add photos…and realised, before I could I would need to download my entire photo library again….The truth is I actually wrote this post last week…

Two steps forward…three steps back…

Laters, Kate x