Happy New Year

Too much life to blog. Or a conspiracy of some kind; our friends in the cottages to either side of us and the cottages opposite us all had internet connection for our week away. True, one of them had to sit in the laundry room, and another kneel on her son's bed with laptop pressed to the bedroom window, but they still had access. We had nothing. So we had a week of real life instead.

This would have been a wonderful opportunity to get out and take lots of photos, and save them up for a nice pretty post on our return. Unfortunately life got in the way of that a bit too, and I have a fine collection of ultra shaky juddery unidentifiable photos. And some nice blue screen of death error messages on the camera. Must stop Little Fish from dribbling in it.

We had a good week though. Sometimes it's nice just to concentrate on the here and now. Mog scared some of the children and fascinated others with her need for regular hoovering. Little Fish found her old friends Zach the boy-boy and Heather the girl. And we got to know some newer friends better too.

Third time lucky for me this year. The first year we went away with this group of friends, Mog and I saw the New Year in riding on an ambulance through Launceston (all the church bells started ringing, it was very pretty even if not quite what we'd planned) on our way to hospital with one fosterbaby and Mog both fitting merrily. Goldie stayed with our friends and decided to sing the night away for them.

Last year no child in hospital, but two very tired children needing to be in bed before midnight.

And this year, adjoining cottages so children could be in bed and grown ups could stay in communication - lovely.

A peaceful week, pleasant days and silly silly evenings and not awful nights. I missed the photo of our bus fully loaded - we did manage to fit armchair, three wheelchairs, two children, myself and a partridge in a pear tree and all our luggage. Just.

Some photos survived the cull.Boston. St Botolph's, better known as Boston Stump. For my Reformed friends in the US, a plaquecommemorating the governers of your own Boston.

For relatives reading, the font where Dad and Uncle David were Christened when they were home from Dortmund.Driven past it a hundred times on our way to various assorted relatives, never been inside before.
Little Fish's close up of the outside of the church. I'll spare you her shot of the paving slabs and the one of the pigeon tails.And an only semi shaky interior
Little Fish running away from a new friend with the same wheelchair. Bittersweet this; one small boy half her age and half her size but with the same disability. Now everyone I know says how wonderfully well LF pushes her wheelchair, how zippy, how fast, how impressive, how all-round amazingly excellent she is. And then we see this little chap. And he has just a couple of extra inches of mobility, an extra couple of inches of stability. And he leaves her standing. LF has the practice; she has the art of bumping up ramps and kerbs. But he has the flexibility to turn on a pin, to lean forwards to get up a really good speed, and to balance and twist.
This makes me sad. And then it makes me thankful that we have her powerchair too. And I remember that those couple of inches could easily have gone the other way too, and then potentially she'd have no use of her arms either. But it is enough to reinforce the fact that she will continue to need her powerchair, that the wheelchair service were probably right and not just extremely generous to supply it, and that when she starts fulltime school she's going to need to have it with her if she isn't going to wear herself out completely.

And, randomly, and because they are in focus, two photos to give you an idea of some of the less obvious but still tiring caring tasks I face. Daily, someone needs to turn thisinto this
And if that isn't reason enough to appreciate everything our carers do, I'm not sure what is!

I am sorry about the photos; I think I need to de-gunge the camera somehow.

School starts on Tuesday; on Wednesday we start the next round of medical appointments and hopefully begin to get some answers or at least some decent treatment for Mog's present problems. Back to reality. But for now the girls are sleeping, the cats are fed, the fish have had babies in our absence, and I am ready for bed.

Good night, and good new year.
Tia