Finish Holidays!

As Diamond's Greek chums would have it, "Finish Holidays!" and our week of invasion is over. Our final afternoon / evening is spent relaxing with the kids all watching the film "Enchanted" after which young R (4) decides she is going to marry Dad. There are heated discussions about this as she has already promised herself to her beloved Tommo-the-Builder down in Silverwood's home town, so we wonder will she let Tommo down gently. Mum cooks everyone a lovely meal of pork in creamy mushroom sauce and there is some light packing and sorting stuff ready for the drive home on Monday. Mrs S must be home for Tuesday as she has to go on a training course.

And so Monday morning rolls round and Mum cooks everyone a huge fried breakfast; white pudding, black pudding, eggs, rashers, beans, mushrooms, toast, sausages. Stuff is hauled out of the caravan and the bedrooms and the car is loaded. It is only as the kids and animals are being loaded into the car that Mrs S surprises us by handing back the puppy Goldie and says "No, This one's staying!" It seems we are to have Towser's sister as a gift; Mrs S is not going to sell him after all. This is brilliant for Towser who has been playing really well with her all week, it's brilliant for me as the pups can plague each other and might leave me alone a bit to carry on being "Alpha Bitch" and top dog, it's good for the kittens as Goldie will take some of Towser's energies  and stop over-powering them with his 'lurve' and it's made Mum and Dad very happy too. Goldie, who was only ever called Goldie after her gold coloured collar to tell her apart from Blackie, Bluey, Silvery etc, is promptly renamed "Poppy" by Mum and enveloped in a hug bear hug. Mum is welling up a bit as the gang say their farewells and drive off down the drive.

And so to a day or so of blitzing the house and grounds back to 'normal'. Beds are stripped and a mountain of laundry is done. The house is swept, recycling bins filled, the corrugated iron sheeting is taken down from farm gates, where it was put to contain Max and Lily and keep them away from the rabbits, hens, lane-way and kittens. The tent, which was tired and old and was abandoned by the campers, has its groundsheets cut out by Stanley knife so that they can be used for weed-surpressing covers for the allotment. The badminton and other games gear is gathered up for storage till next time. There are only 2 packing failures - the guests manage to leave R's specs behind so we nip down to post them on and later we discover that 'Ducky', favourite night time cuddly toy of R and 'Sharky', favourite NTT of M have been left behind. We let them enjoy our evening with us and a glass of wine before posting them on tomorrow.

And so to reality.

KIttens Arrive

Our main event for Sunday 15^th July was to head for Silverwood’s to collect the 2 new kittens. These little mites are only 6 weeks old which seemed a bit young to us but apparently that is OK for felines. They are called Blue and Rolo and were ‘bred’ by daughter of Tommo the Builder (though I’m surte that bher only involvement was to own the bottle-brush tailed cat, Bailey. Mum and Dad managed to wrap the 2 hour each way 'zoom' around a lovely roast pork dinner including Mrs S’s best ever crackling. It (the zoom) was preceded by the usual unleashing the chickens of war but we have now developed a handy rounding them up process involving going to fetch grain from the clangy dustbin in their shed (they hear and come zooming over to see if there's food on offer).

The drive itself was made slightly more scenic and less zoomy by us being diverted off the main road by the Guards (Police) to avoid 'Match Traffic' - some kind of GAA big match in Roscommon. So now we have 2 kittens who are doing ‘cute’ in a very thorough and professional manner but whom I am not allowed to eat. This message is being driven home very forcibly, as it was for the chickens, this time by a series of ‘training sessions’ in which I am kept on a lead and introduced. I am allowed enough lead to sniff, watch and chase them some of the way round the furniture, but never quite enough to poke them with my nose or worse. I think the plan is that we all end up one big happy family.

Oh and Dad’s Rotovator is sick. Something to do with the ignition, possibly as a result of him forgetting to cover it one rainy night, so that is off to the 'garage' this morning.

Silverwood Seven

 On Friday 15th, Mum and Dad head for Silverwood to catch up with the family but also to get a first glimpse of Lily's pups (at Day 12) and also, if they can wangle it, Tommo the Builder's "bottle brush kittens". We dogs are left behind for this as we'd cause too much confusion and Lily has even banished the puppies' Father, Maxwell from the room. The pups are all very cute, plump and healthy and have been going down great guns on Facebook with a series of pictures posted by Mrs S under the heading "The Silverwood  Seven"

 The plan is currently that one of these little mites joins our number at week 8 so, roughly, the end of July. It will be a boy and will be named Towser. Mrs S has picked one out for us.

 Mum and Dad are taken round to Tommo's house where a young daughter, the nominal owner of the cat, Bailey, brings the kittens down to the front garden to show them off. Later she also brings Bailey down and she has indeed got the legendary 'bottle brush' tail which it would be quite fun of the kittens were to inherit. Bailey herself was formerly a feral cat, then adopted by Tommo's daughter. She has had three kittens. There is a big one which an Aunt is having, but the other two, very similar kittens are ours. They might have been named Heckle and Jeckle but now Mum has seen that one is slightly ginger and the other 'blue', they may end up named Ginger and Blue.

 All very cute. It remains to be seen how I take to these new animals when they arrive, or indeed how Coco does. Incidentally, ignore anything you heard or read about Coco being renamed Trig. The name never stuck. The humans keep forgetting it and calling Coco Coco anyway, so they have decided to revert to Coco.

Schools Runs and stuff

We are settling into a good routine at the Silverwoods. Weekdays are a succession of school runs with a short spell of peace in between, especially in the rain when the older 2 girls get lifts they would not normally get because Dad offered. It does not seem to have stopped raining since the offer. Even today Dad was just about to shear the sheep-like fleece off of Maxwell, when Max did a superb rain-dance and brought down so much rain that using electric clippers out doors would have been a bit hazardous.

Weekends are for 'activities' for children and events like parties. The girls all go to baton-twirling on Saturday morning and on the most recent one there was a Birthday party for neighbour Emma (11) which involved hired in bouncy castles in a Sports Hall at the school. Impressive towering bouncy castles these. The children were all ages from babes in arms up to 'older sisters' of some of the same-age party-goers, so Em-J was there along with J-M Silverwood, one of Emma's "best mates". J-M then also had a sleep-over at Emma's.

For the grown-ups the main entertainment was painting three rooms using an electric pumped-paint roller thing called a Dulux paint pod, which Mrs S has said "we" can borrow for the Roscommon house when we get to the painting stage. The main plan was to get the two rooms which have had new floors fitted painted before Tommo-the-Builder returns to do the skirting boards, thus saving the job of cutting in round the new boards.

Having got themselves onto a roll, however, they didn't stop, but carried on into the kitchen. This involved a fair amount of clearing space at the walls so that painters could walk about and stand on chairs and thus generated a bit of tidying up. The gang started the work at about midday after a good fried breakfast done by Mr S, but then Mr S had to skedaddle on yet another taxi-run with No. 1 son, so Mrs S and Dad carried on assisted by Em-J on the roller and J-M on the brushes.

The two little ones had been given "Magic paint" (an empty tub) and brushes and their own bit of wall to paint to keep them quiet. Dad thought this "Emperor's clothes" solution would never work but the two little ones got really into it coming back every now and then for more paint, asking grown ups for an opinion of how good their work looked, washing the (non-existent) paint off their hands and even complaining later that they were tired from all the painting. Kept them amused for hours while the grown-ups got on with painting. Didn't work quite so well at the end when the walls had real new wet paint on them, so that kids with dry brushes, on a mission, might still make a mess, but by then M was out with Mr S and little R had moved on to other things. In the last knockings, Em-J disappeared for a bath and was then given the two little ones to bath too! Stitched up.

By 20:30 everyone was tired from the decorating and then tidying away and Mrs S phoned out for pizza. The pizza arrived bigger than two feet across and accompanied by buffalo wings, 2 types of garlic cheesy bread, chicken dips, chips, coca cola and Mars flavoured ice cream.

Get in there!

Deefs

Deefs

School Runs

Sorry we've done no pictures lately, but we still have a mess of 'junk' in the car and only part of the contents of the C4 are moved indoors. We are all settling into the Silverwood routine now here, with 'school mornings' filled with readying the little ones for school, getting some breakfast into them, making sure they have clothes, lunches, school bags etc. and getting them there. This will all be familiar stuff to anyone with children of their own, of course, but it's all 'different' and a bit exciting to us.

Dad is loving having something real to do after the stir-crazy inducing Pud Lady's routine and being properly helpful again. Mrs S is laid low with flu-ey symptoms, head aches and snuffling, sustained by cups of tea so she's not about to turn down the offer of taxi runs and shopping missions. Also, no-one has yet asked him to play them at Scrabble, which is a major bonus!

The local dogs are growing up fast - when Dad last saw Maxwell he was a boisterous 6 month old and Lily a tiny slip of a pup, just barely old enough to leave Mum. Coco the Yorkie was older but is very slightly built. Now Maxwell is coming up to full size, is a bit less mad but is now bigger than Coco and starting to think like the alpha-male. Their normal home is a nice comfy kennel on the decking in the back yard, around which is a wooden paling ranch fence, through which Coco can still slip if Maxwell gets a bit too much. Lily, being female does not get duffed up by Max but likes a good bark on occasions, so you generally know they are about. We've been out there a few times to say hello, but we are happy to stay 'indoor dogs'.

Ah well. Tommo the Builder is back in today laying laminate in the hall way, with his lad Owen. The two of them are chatting away in the hall among the clatter of sheets of laminate and the occasional rattle of the jig saw. Toddler R (now 4) follows Tommo round like a shadow up till the point one of the power tools start up. She doesn't like that noise so retreats to the kitchen with a pained expression till the saw stops and she can go back into admiring Tommo again.

Happy Days

Deefs