An epic week.

WOW What a week this has been. Good day friends I can only hope your week has been a good one with no major 'speed bumps' to slow you down. My week has been 'epic' in so many ways, apart from the usual 'non stop busyness' that seems to define our retirement there have been quite a few stand out moments and memories. To start off with I was determined to bake and have success at making 'my' bread and rusks, so having learnt from last weeks fiasco and taking things slowly I very carefully measured and mixed the ingredients and let the Bread Machine do the rest and Voila ......... I had a perfect loaf of stone ground brown bread. Great joy and Hubby Dearest wasted no time in digging in. Then came the rusks, again I diligently weighed, measured and mixed and everything looked good except for the fact these don't need a bread machine it all on my shoulders haha. I put them in the oven and after a really long drying out time (I'm not sure why they took so long) we have a huge tin of rusks, again with Hubby wasting no time in testing them out. Success on two endeavours like that for me makes it an epic week, but to top it off August is also a major family birthday month with three of us all being within one week of each other. I have the honours of being first on the list and because of the move and all the things that have happened this year I had accepted the fact it would be a quiet birthday. I know that Poppet had tried so hard to organise a huge family get together and party as this was my 60th (shhhhhh), this proved to be well nigh impossible because of the move things kept changing until we could all see it was not going to happen. So quiet birthday it was and I have now decided officially that the number is, just that - a number, because I definitely don't feel 60, don't act 60 and don't like the number haha.
BigBear and BabyBear had suggested that we all have supper together and I was more than happy with that. I was so blessed with all the messages and calls that I received, it completely blew me away. We had a lovely quite day at home, I got to Skype with Poppet and Princess, had a lovely chat with Miss Muffet and our two grandsons in the UK, and then later went off to meet the family. Well what can I say except I have the most amazing kids in the universe, we arrived at this very fancy restaurant and there were BigBear and BabyBear at a table that was loaded with gifts and flowers and even a '60' candle burning on top of a brownie, what a total surprise. It turns out that they had all been scheming and planning on how to do this without everyone present. Each one had organised their gift with BabyBear who had co-ordinated the whole event, apart from not physically having the rest of the family with us it was as near to a perfect birthday as I have ever had. Big Guy according to his tradition had a beautiful bouquet of roses with the cutest little white Teddy Bear (yes I still love Teddy Bears/ fluffy animals and he most often gives them to me) there were so many gifts from them with one special gift from them all which is a beautiful antique decorative plate in blue and white, which I love, to always remind me of this special birthday. Again, thank you family for spoiling me beyond all expectation and making me feel so treasured and loved. As I said the following day, if this is what becoming more mature is all about, bring it on. Today is BabyBear's birthday and on Tuesday is BigBear's birthday, so you see what I mean that it is a major month of family birthdays.

We are, I think, settling down to life at the coast although we still pinch ourselves everyday at how good God has been in bringing us to this piece of paradise. Today there is not a cloud in the sky, there is no wind and the sea is the most gorgeous colour, it brings peace to my soul and calm to my mind. This week has also had it challenges as life tends to do. First Hubby and now Jelly Bean have both had really awful colds and coughs, so I have been dosing them up and it looks like they are now on the mend. Yesterday I had a major 'Fibro flare' which pretty much left me doing as little as possible and staying under my heating pad, it will take awhile to get through, but I am in the best place in the world to do that.

On the furry family front ........ It is never boring I can confidently say that. We have found out where Max aka Houdini was getting out and have closed that off now as well, he still patrols all the perimeter fences looking for gaps but so far with no further success. Yesterday Kiko got out and Hubby had to do some quick stalking to catch her, we were at a loss as to how she managed to get out until last night. We were sitting in the bedroom chatting and the next thing this little horror jumps from the toilet, across the laundry basket, over the hand basin, then takes a mighty leap up onto the glass shower door, walks along it until she can reach the shower head, from there to the window sil and Bob's your uncle out of the window. Their intelligence astounds me at times. Needless to say that the shower window is now not completely open and I am doing everything to discourage her from doing it again. This morning I was IN the shower and she did it so while she was carefully walking along the shower door I calmly flicked her with water until she decided she liked the water less than she wanted out of the window. Happily her and Gemma are now relatively peaceful together, not total peace, but they have accepted each other and even have some play time. Yippee that took awhile like a whole five months.


Folks I have rambled on long enough and my darling husband is starting to wonder where his lunch is. Here is wishing you and yours a wonderful weekend, have fun, make memories and always please stay safe.



Stone ground home made bread



Yummy muesli rusks