Jilly's Blog: Monday 25th October

It’s Monday! The weekend has flown by. Its half term week so Simon is at home for the week. We had a fairly lazy Sunday. A late breakfast of crumpets and scrambled egg and then lots of lounging around and reading. In the afternoon Simon went to his barn and I finished tidying my landing cupboard and listed a couple more things on EBay. I don’t think anyone has even looked at them yet! We’ll see. If they don’t sell I’ll donate them to the local charity shop. I really just need to get rid of them. Any extra cash from selling them will be a bonus.

Simon cooked a lovely roast chicken dinner and I had a nice relaxing bath so it was quite a good day.

Today we were looking after Evan and Flynn. We had them at our house. They were both very good. Evan is such a delight with the things that he says. He played really well for ages on his own while we just watched. He had 4 cars of Simons and some duplo bricks which were a garage. He pushed each car in turn around the coffee table and lined them up in the garage. He even counted them each time....1, 2, 3, 4!!!!! He is a clever little one.

Simon took him to the park for an hour whilst Flynn supposedly had a nap! He took ages to go off and then only slept for half an hour! He seemed ok though. Once Simon was back from the park it was lunch time and both boys did really well. In fact Evan was so full up he only ate half of the chocolate buttons I gave him at the end.

We then took them in the car to the Pets at Home shop. We want to get a new bed for Loulou and the pet store has all sorts of animals so we knew they would like it. We saw fish, rabbits, mice, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, gerbils, a chinchilla, some lizards and some tiny gerbil like creatures called dagu’s. Evan was fascinated by them. They were really inquisitive. We also met a few customers with dogs and he had a stroke of each one and got a lick on his nose from a 5 month old pup. He will soon have his own pup. Coralie and John are getting an Irish (red) setter at the end of November. Coralie grew up with an Irish setter as that was our first dog.

This is a photo taken in early 1981 of me, Samuel and Buick our Irish setter.

Anyway the point of the visit was to find a new bed for Loulou. She has an old wicker basket in the kitchen and it is falling to bits and I often catch my leg on it so it is a real nuisance. We wanted a soft padded one. There weren’t any suitable. The best one just wasn’t big enough. They seemed to have lots of great big cushions but we want a basket type one with sides. I think they are warmer for them to snuggle into. Loulou gets very cold during the night in the winter months even though we leave heating on in the kitchen for them. In fact a few years back you may remember I actually made her a coat out of an old blanket. We had tried tucking her in with a blanket but she would move around and it would come off. The coat works well.

I digress...... We couldn’t find what we wanted. We took the boys home and then went to our local garden centre where they also have a large pet department. They did have a few beds there of the correct size but they were twice the price we wanted to pay so we came home with nothing. I am going to look on the internet.

Simon cooked dinner tonight...a lovely paella. He is now on his computer and I have just finished watching Eastenders. I am going to go out to see a friend for a drink in a while.

Tomorrow we are going to Milton Keynes to Ikea. We will probably take Ellie with us. Lisa needs a rest. Only 6 days to the due date. I’m snatching up the phone the minute it rings now!

We are on the lookout for some new china tomorrow. Ours is a bit of a mixed bunch and we fancy having some that all matches for when everyone is here. We want plain white. We both like plain white and it can be added to at any time from any range. We’ll see what they have. It will make a day out anyway and we will have lunch there too. Last time we went we had lunch and it was really very good and reasonably priced.

Ok that’s it for today!