Oh boy...

... life has a way of getting in the way of good old honest blog writing, doesn't it? 

Not that it's been all bad, but the past few weeks have been absolutely packed with all sorts of things, both brilliant and not so brilliant.

On the down side (getting that out of the way first), work has been insane. INSANE, I'm telling you. Not just for me, we've all suffered. My colleague pulled an all-nighter the other day, working 30 hours in a row, with no sleep, just to catch up. While I am familiar with that from my student days it really isn't something that you regularly do in your 40s I think. She admitted that she felt absolutely dreadful afterwards and it took days for her to recover, but it needed to be done at the time.

While I've refused to work all night my days have been pretty intense BUT it's almost done now. Sure, I have other things to do (and I'll get on with those today, so I can finally, finally not feel guilty about postponing them again), at least the big big marking is out of the way and once we have our exam boards next week it will be properly finalised and DONE. 

Now, that's the bad stuff. The good stuff is pretty great too! 

First of all, boy #1 had his first holy communion a couple of weeks ago. 

We celebrated the day quietly, just us, and grandma, and D's uncle and aunt were there for the occasion. After the ceremony there was cake in the church hall and then we all came back to our house for some food. It was nice, and it was so lovely to see D's uncle and wife. They are getting older and who knows how long it will be possible for them to travel, so it was doubly appreciated that they decided to come for the celebration.

A week later (as in last weekend) was my birthday. My 40th birthday no less! 

Again, I didn't think we had anything big planned. D convinced me that we should mark the occasion with a nice meal in a restaurant we both like, and again (I thought) we'd planned to just have a quiet meal (well, not quiet per se perhaps, with the boys...), together with grandma, who lives very close by. Little did I know that they'd both been plotting for months! When we got to the restaurant who should I find but my dad and my 2nd mum and her aunt from Germany AND my brother-in-law and his family, all waiting for us?! They'd all been planning their surprise visit for months and my German family had stayed with grandma for the night before the party so I wouldn't know anything about it. 

Needless to say I was completely stunned! Such an amazing birthday surprise!

The relatives stayed for a few days afterwards, which was lovely, and went back to the airport on Wednesday, thereby concluding our very sociable last few weeks. 

Despite the not-quite-so-nice work pressures it's been a good few weeks. 

The only thing that has really suffered (besides the blog) is my knitting. I managed a few rows here and there, but it's been fairly unimpressive. 

Anyway, there you go, my excuses are made! ;)  

And since I have no knitting worth mentioning that I could contribute to this post today, have this instead - can you spot what is wrong with this picture?

Yep, you got it, it's a chicken in the kitchen. Nyla managed to escape quite a bit recently. She has been a bit unwell, poor lady, but ever since she recovered she's been up to her old tricks, flapping over the fence of the chicken enclosure, and then running, as fast as she can, to the back door so she can slip in while nobody is looking. As soon as she's gobbled up all the cat food she'll make her way to the kitchen to forage for crumbs under the table. 

Naughty girl, that Nyla. 

Rex disapproves.

Right she is. 

Anyway, up and onwards, hopefully towards less stressful worktimes and more productive knitting and crafting.