We have moved

We moved out of our house last Wednesday and now wait to find out when completion on the new house will take place. In the meantime, the family are divided between family members. The girls and I are staying with my parents with our 2 dogs and 2 cats. Jon is staying with his sister Deb and her husband Dave and Hugh is staying with my brother and family. Thank you to everyone for putting us up until we can get into the new house. I don't have any recent photos but will hopefully get back to taking more now that things are calming down a bit. xx

Where did October go?

I've had a few reminders from family/friends about the fact that I haven't posted in a while. Life is hectic at the moment - we have a skip on the drive and I am madly trying to clear clutter and get rid of rubbish. We move one week from tomorrow!!! We won't be able to move into the house we're buying for another month after that, so the family will be splitting up and the furniture will go into storage. Claire, Emily and I will be going to stay with my Mum and Dad (thank you Mum & Dad!!) as well as the two dogs and two cats!! Hugh is going to stay with his girlfriend, Sarah, during the week and come back to EG to stay with my brother and family at the weekends when he has work. Jon will find out tomorrow (hopefully) whether he has a place to stay with our nephews. It's going to be strange but in the grand scheme of things, it's not for that long - we'll manage!! Once things settle down a bit I will get back to blogging more regularly and taking more photos. Take care xx

Surprise!! Another update .....

As I mentioned in my last post, the day of the wedding was also my daughter Emily's 11th birthday. She had time to open family presents before we left for the wedding.

After the wedding lunch we went home for a short while before going back for the evening reception. In that short space of time we managed to pick up Emily's friend, Emily (yes two Emilys!) and have a quick birthday tea and cake and a few more presents were opened.

Her friend, Emily, had given her Spin the Bottle and at this stage they were supposed to be doing the can-can. As you can see there was much laughter and not quite as much dancing ;)

I will post as and when I can from now until we move.

xx

October already!!

Where has the time gone ..... September was a busy month for us and October looks to be similar as we prepare to pack up our house to move to the new one. Unfortunately it looks like we are going to have to store our furniture for a month before we can actually move into the new house and we are in the process of trying to sort out where we will stay in the meantime. It could, however, have been worse and we are just looking forward to being in in time for Christmas!

So, what have we been doing other than packing? I mentioned in previous posts that our girls were going to be bridesmaids at the end of September and they looked beautiful! Jon's sister Debbie got married to Dave on Emily's 11th birthday (29 Sept) so it will certainly be a day she will remember for a long time.

Our morning started early with the hairdresser arriving to do the girls hair. Once hair was finished it was time for make up before getting to the hotel to dress. I was able to take some photos for the couple and enjoyed doing it.

Debbie

Emily, Debbie & Claire

My son Hugh and his girlfriend, Sarah

Claire with her boyfriend, Chris Debbie and Dave with Debbie's Dad and some of her siblings.

L - R: Jon, Mike, Jerry, Deb, dad Frank, Dave, Martin and Penny

My Dad and Mum

Emly, just after everyone had sung Happy Birthday to her

Jon's other sister, Penny, was over from South Africa for the wedding. This photo shows her with two of her sons, James and Rob, who live in the UK.

I will try and post more regularly but this month could be rather hectic!

xx

13 days since my last post!!!

So much is happening at the moment and although I do have photos, I haven't done anything with them and time just seems to disappear. I will get round to updating as soon as I can. The house sale is going well, the house purchase - not so well! Enough said for now!! Keep checking back and I will try and get some photos on here - I feel so behind!! xx

Have I told you .....?

Have I mentioned on my blog that both my daughers are going to be bridesmaids this month? We had the final fitting of their dresses on Monday afternoon and they're done! The wedding dress arrived at our house this afternoon (phew! glad it made it in time!!). The dress has been tried on and is quite a good fit, just the hem to be taken up a bit. As you can see, I haven't given too much away and I'm not posting any photos .... you'll have to wait till the end of the month ;) The girls are really excited about being bridesmaids and I'm excited about getting some photos I am allowed to show. Have a good evening xx

Daily Dose Photo - Day 12

Todays image was to be a work in progress. Our packing is a work in progress at the moment, hence the photo of a packing box! Sorry it's not anything more exciting - I wish it could have been a scrapbook page or something but no such luck!!

Daily Dose Photo - Day 11

This is our Mantel, it's got a few random things on it at the moment but it's what we're seeing for now. When we move to the new house, there isn't a fireplace or mantel. It'll take a little bit of getting used to but I'm sure I'll find somewhere else to display things.

A wedding

Jon, Emily and I attended the wedding of Rick and Ruth yesterday afternoon. Rick works in the Broadway Pub and plays pool with Jon. The wedding service was lovely with a few occassions for laughter as well. Will & Theresa were there with Michaela and Tyler and Shane & Emma had also been invited. Needless to say, I took my camera with me and took a few photos - some of them below.

The bridal party

Theresa, Will and Tyler

Michaela, Theresa & Tyler

Emily

Emma & Shane's wedding is coming up in November

Tyler had lots of smiles for Mum!

xx

Daily Dose Photo - Day 9

Today's photo is our back garden. This is a view I look at every day and one that I will miss when we move. We've spent many happy hours sitting out on the patio having braai's (bbq's) and playing darts. However, I think our new garden will soon become home too and I think it's going to be a lovely sunny area!

I am planning on doing all these photos again once we've moved into the new house, it will be interesting to compare them.

Daily Dose Photo - Day 8

My kitchen counter (well, part of it anyway). The sandwich toaster gets used often in our house as both Emily and I enjoy a toasted sandwich. The cake server is empty otherwise I would be tempted to eat whatever was in it! Even the fruit in the fruitbowl is going down and finally at the front are my phone and my reading glasses - two things I often hunt for!

Daily Dose Photo - Day 7

My books! Seeing as the class is a scrapbook related class, I decided to take a photo of some of my scrapbooking books/magazines. I love sitting leafing through these to get ideas for pages I might want to do.

Daily Dose Photo - Day 6

I got my iPod as part of my Christmas present last year. I'll often wear it while I'm busy around the house and the children tend to know when it is as they'll hear me singing along with whatever's playing (not very tunefully probably!)

Daily Dose Photo - Day 5

My favourite colour is blue! If you've been to our house you would know that there is a lot of blue in it - the lounge suite, the kitchen tiles, the bathroom tiles, my bedroom walls .....
You get the picture ;)

Back to School

Emily went back to school yesterday. The holiday seemed to fly by and I can't believe she is now in her final year of Junior School. As has become tradition in our house, I had to take a photo of her on her first day back. We finally had the offer on the new house accepted. Now the work really begins as we start to declutter and downsize. I've now got to get all the paperwork sorted for the lawyers/mortgage and hope that everything goes smoothly. If all goes well we could be in by the end of October - yikes!!

Photo Day5 will be posted as soon as I take it ;)
xx

Daily Dose Photo - Day 4

My mobile phone. I used to have to try and remember to carry it with me but now feel lost if I forget to take it. What did we do before we had mobiles?

Daily Dose Photo - Day 3

Our topic was Around Town. This is London Road in East Grinstead - our local town. A lot of the buildings are hundreds of years old and it's fascinating when you stop and look closely at them - so much history!

Catching up again!

A lot has happened this week. We finally sold our house on Thursday and the family who have bought it have already sold their current house and are keen to move as quickly as possible. They had suggested the end of September but I don't know that we'll be ready by then. I haven't been looking because I didn't know how long it would take us to sell, so I then had to start going out to look for a new house. I saw the first one on Friday and took Claire and Emily along with me. I've had my eye on this house for a while but thought it would have probably sold before we were ready to buy. It hasn't and, after looking around it, we think it would be just right for us!! Can you believe it, the first house we looked at! Anyway, I took Jon and Hugh to see it on Saturday morning and they also both like it so we have started the process of putting offers in. I'm hoping that by the end of the day tomorrow we could have bought it! Now I can't wait to move!!

This new house is close enough that Emily will be able to walk to and from school on her own (when I'm ready to let her - and until then she'll have me walking with her!) and it's just up the road from my parents and my brother and his family. It's also an easy walk into town and Claire's bus for College would pick her up just at the top of the road to Emily's school. We're starting to get excited!! Fingers crossed!!

Mum and Dad had a visit from our neighbours from South Africa on Saturday afternoon. They are over here visiting their son and wanted to pop down to see them. Ronald brought them down and his two little girls came with them. Ronald and I went to Junior school together in South Africa and it was fun catching up on any news about old school friends. I've lost touch will most of my Junior School friends so it was funny to hear how they're all doing.

Stuart and Lynn, Mum, Ronald and Dad

Can you believe it is September already! Before we know it we're going to be thinking of Christmas!!! Help!! The good thing about it being September is that I have started a new class on Big Picture Scrapbooking called Daily Dose. It's a fun class run by Gretchen Schmidt (http://gretchenschmidt.blogspot.com/) who sets daily assignments for us. We also take a photo each day for 30 days and then there's a project at the end which will incorporate them. I will try and remember to print the photos I take each day as a way of remembering to post on my blog.

Day 1 photo

The first of the daily photos is my kitchen sink. Since we've had our house on the market I've had to try and keep the kitchen tidy which is why it looks quite neat. The bowl on the right is a halloween bowl I bought on one of the trips to Chicago to see Simon and Liz. This bowl hasn't been put away since last halloween and we've been using it to collect all the peelings for the compost heap.

Day 2

The second photo was to be of something that has been handed down to me. Mum gave me these cake plates which I think had been wedding gifts to her and Dad.

Best Friends

On Monday Emily had Emily round to play. The girls have been friends for most of their school life and although they've had their ups and downs, to date, they still remain best friends.

We did a fun little photo shoot before the girls go back to school next week. Here are a few of the photos I liked.

And finally, this serious one of Emily, just something about it that I like! (She was laughing and happy within seconds of it being taken - not really as sad as she looks!)
xx

You make me SMILE

Today we went out to Creative Pastimes. It was a bit of a family outing with Mum, Louise, Faith, Theresa, Tyler, Emily and myself going. I hadn't been there since Norma was over and it was just good to go and see what they had in stock. I didn't buy a lot for myself but did leave feeling in the mood to do a scrapbook page.

This afternoon I printed off a few of the photos of Tyler from last Saturday and completed a quick layout. Here it is ....

Sorry, the photo is a bit crooked but you get the idea anyway. Here's to doing a few more layouts soon - it's been a while!

Journaling reads: You are growing up so quickly and are such a happy little boy. Nearly 7 months old. 18/08/2007

Have a good evening.

xx

Annoying

We were supposed to have two viewings this morning - one at 11am and one at 11.30am. By 11.15am no one had arrived so I called the agent who then called the mobiles of those concerned. One had had something crop up last night and wasn't going to make it (why not phone the agents to let them know then!!!) and the other had decided our house was slightly out of their price bracket! It annoys me when people don't let you know they're not coming - I could have had a lie in (haha!). At least the house is looking lovely and tidy again and it's a good way to start the week ahead :)

This afternoon, Emily and I went to Leah's 4th birthday party. Alison & I met when Jake and Emily started school together. Leah was born 6 years later and we get invited to her parties and I get to take photos. Today I hadn't checked my camera battery properly and it ran out before the birthday girl blew out the candles :( I did, however, get a few photos before then and reverted to using Mark's camera (Ali's husband) for the remainder of the photos.

Jake, Leah & Emily

Opening presents

xx