The weekend is here

It's Friday, Matt is on his way home and has the next 12 days off work. He's picking the van up first thing tomorrow morning and hopefully Kate, Heath, Ben, Libby, Pete, Steve, Lindsey, Alexander, Neil, Siobhan, Tom, Erin and Sam will all arrive at some point over the weekend to help with the move and a spot of decorating. Clearly the ladies will be sitting around gossiping and drinking tea while the babies gurgle, the kids cause havoc and the men do the heavy stuff. Bring it on.

Today is my birthday

Today is my birthday and possibly the dullest one I have ever had due to imminent house move, general flat chaos and two small children to prevent any kind of selfish indulgence. Packing is in full swing and proving interesting with a curious toddler to manage. Every time I turn my back he's emptying the contents of the box I've just packed. The whole flat is now a fantastic climbing frame for him with piles of boxes everywhere.

Adam, the plumber, is at the house hopefully finishing off his outstanding jobs. He needs to cap the old gas pipes in the lounge and dining room, remove the radiator pipes from David's room, install the sink in our bedroom, finish the flue, install the new bath and tile in the bathroom and replace the bent grill in the hallway. All we need to do now is move in.

All systems go

I can't believe we are moving at the weekend. It seemed such a long way away in January and now it is upon us and I've got the daunting task of packing everything into boxes this week.

Matt spent Saturday and Sunday at the house. He started undercoating our room on Saturday and also bought the bath and the tiles. On Sunday he spent the day screwing down the floorboards and generally tidying everything up in preparation for the weekend. We hired a van for the removals and I ordered a washing machine which will be delivered on Saturday.

The plumber is due back next week to fit the sink in our room, install the new bath and generally finish off all the outstanding bits. It's all systems go.

Time Out

I banned Matt from going to the house over the weekend. He came home from work on Thursday evening with a cracking headache and spent virtually the next 48 hours in bed. I took him to the doctors on Friday and he was diagnosed with sinisitus and given a course of penicillin to sort him out.

We've been piling the pressure on ourselves and I think Matt's illness made us both realise we had to slow things down and not get worked up about our situation. So what if we have to move in to a house with bare floorboards and no curtains. It's not the end of the world. Matt stayed off work on Friday and the following Monday and Tuesday and we both really needed the time to reassess our situation. As a result, everything feels so much better now.

We finally gave our notice on the flat which has also helped to focus us. We are going to do the big move during the weekend of the 20th and 21st March and have to hand back the keys to Meena and Deepak on the 24th which allows us two clear days to clean the flat. Finally, we are almost ready to move in to Abbotsdene.