Hmmm, I really am falling behind with my blog!  We've actually been very busy the last couple of weeks.  Week commencing 16th February, Peter took us up to Scotland with him - I was really pleased to spend some time with my sister and nieces although it was really over too quickly!  The girls were not on their best or even semi-best behaviour especially at night-time which made the days that much harder to cope with but we all survived relatively intact! 

 

What has been keeping me the most busy is taking on the management of our rental property!  I feel a lot more in control of it now and am actually enjoying the organising, production, collation of the contracts, packs etc.  I've been getting a lot of guidance from the Residential Landlords Association so am comfortable that I'm doing everything by the book.

 

We've also started taking exercise and activities as a family.  To be honest both Peter and I are lacking energy and motivation at the moment, I think Peter more so.  After another couple of horrendous nights, I suggested to Peter that we do some activities with the girls, which needn't be expensive and hopefully enjoyable!  We sat down on Saturday night and decided to go for a long family walk on Sunday.  We are very lucky to be surrounded by beautiful scenery and decided to start relatively sedately using Yorkshire Water's recreation grounds around the local reservoirs.  We opted to walk around Fewston reservoir and probably completed about 2.5/3 miles and we all, especially Peter, enjoyed it.  We had a picnic in the car and an ice-cream on the way back.  On Monday, the girls and I decided accompany the neighbour and her dog on their walk.  Really, I only planned on walking to the end of the lane and back, but we decided to go on the whole route and the girls amazed us both with their stamina and behaviour.  We covered nearly 4 miles uphill and downhill and we're treated on the way back with the sight of some very new lambs, which delighted us all!  I'm starting to wonder if I suffer from S.A.D or if it's just the fact I love Spring so much! I feel myself come alive when the weather, albeit still cold, has drier days and we wake up to not only beautiful sunrises but wonderful dawn choruses.

 

On Wednesday we took advantage of Peter's work in Blackpool and had a day at the seaside - unfortunately it sounds more exciting than it was due to the fact that a) it's off-season and b) they're renovating all the promenade and have closed the beaches.  We drove a little way outside of Blackpook where we managed to find a lovely sandy, quiet beach where the girls enjoyed being "chased" by the waves and running wild.  This afternoon, Lauren and Martha had some newish friends over for lunch and we all enjoyed playing outside afterwards.

We have spent the past week shovelling snow, sledging, skidding, rescuing and generally enjoying the seasonal weather!  I decided to keep the girls at home for the week, playgroup was closed 1 day but apart from it being easier to stay at home, it was fun!!

 

 

 

We hope you have a great day and a fun time at the zoo!

 

 

We hope you have a fantastic day!!

 

 

It's great to have Peter back home.  He spent the whole of last week away and we really missed him.  He finished his work early on Friday morning so was able to come home before the girls finished Playgroup and collected them.  They were thrilled to see him, so much so that Martha squealed and burst into tears, Lauren ran shrieking to him and both decided to walk out holding daddy's hands and I was pushed to the back!  Peter cannot believe how much the girls, especially Martha, can change in a week.

 

The added bonus today was the snow!  It meant that Peter had an extra day at home with us, which part was spent doing his paperwork and the other playing in the snow!  The snow depth has doubled since we were out this morning and judging by both the current conditions and forecast, I expect we'll all stay at home again tomorrow!  I've posted a few photos of us sledging this morning - we're blessed to have a fantastic hill right behind the house.  Martha still shows no fear over new things and happily boarded the sledge and plummeted downhill at quite a scary pace!  I think the fact that she lay herself flat against the sledge had a lot to do with her super acceleration!  Watch this space, future UK Luge competitor!!  Lauren is still more reserved and cautious and went downhill on Peter's knees and then was happiest being pulled along the flat sections.

 

As I've been writing this, the snow has changed from big, fat flakes to tiny, tiny, fast falling ones - those are the ones I think build up quickly on top of the existing snow.  The whole place looks beautiful, I so love our woods when they're snow/ice covered.  They look like a Christmas card scene - ah ha, there's my idea for this year's personalised Christmas cards!!

 

Our rental house has been eventful this past week.  We found out that our tenant had departed one month prior to contract which isn't a huge issue.  However, the agent checked the place over and basically said it was "fine, nothing to worry about".  We picked up the keys on Friday to inspect ourselves and discovered that the newly (well it was at the start of the tenancy) laid carpet had been burnt by logs/coal falling out of the fire.  They'd left a rug over the burn marks which I'm really mad about as it doesn't appear that the agent has picked up on this "dirty marks on carpet" don't really describe irrepairable damage in my opinion.  The place is quite filthy, my dyson hoover filled up when I hoovered the place and my new cleaning cloths are now grey - I don't mind cleaning, in fact I've come to expect I have to do it between tenancies, however the damage to the property is something I really struggle with - they also drilled (badly) a telephone extension through a door frame and tacked it in halfway across the property. 

 

Good news though is that we've found (hopefully!) another tenant through a friend.  We've decided to call it a day with agents who to be honest, do no better a job than we can do ourselves, even lowering the rent we'll be getting more money per month than paying them to do an inadequate job.