Retaining Walls, Art Class & a Warm Welcome to Bert

The day started badly with both of the reports that we had arranged for the new house arriving in the post. The first estimates the woodworm treatment at over £2000 and the second took our breath away - over £50,000 for the retaining wall to be removed and rebuilt - with a recommendation that the work be done urgently.... hmmm... The idea of moving was to improve our quality of life. I'm not sure that spending that amount of money and overseeing such intensive building works fits into that idea. Mark and I have some serious talking to do but I fear that we will have to withdraw our offer unless we can negotiate. It is not looking good. On a brighter note, I had contact with someone who has a four bedroom bungalow that they will let us rent so at least the immediate issue of somewhere to live is almost resolved.

Had Art Class today which was lovely. The children have moved on to using acrylics and are reproducing sections of some photographs of the village that they took last year. They are painting them onto large canvasses that we bought with a grant from the village hall. The idea is to put them all together to produce one image of the village. Hope it works. They have two more sessions to do and we are hoping that they will have completed them in time to display them at the end of the last session. It is wonderful to see children as young as 6 really concentrating on the task in hand and seeing their interpretations of the images. Some are amazing! My helpers bought far too many cakes for snack time so in an effort to help out, I demolished too many of them and am now feeling a bit sicky!

Welcome to Bert

Little Bert, the Satin Hamster has finally gotten over his shyness and posed for a photograph! He was James' birthday present and spends most of his waking hours practicing gymnastics in his cage! He is soooo noisy! He is also very, very cute and loves to play in his hamster ball in the kitchen.