I'm afraid there aren't the most exciting photos with this post as I keep forgetting to take any! I'll go out somewhere and then afterwards I'll think I should have taken a photo.

Anyway, Monday S and I went into Newton Abbot to get a few bits for her gathering Friday evening, from Poundland. We also had a coffee and a toasted teacake in Coffee 1 which was very nice.

We have had a few days of car repairs - mine was in the garage Monday having a new wheel bearing and Hubby's has been in these last two days having a full service and new brakes pads and shoes so we are now a few hundred pounds lighter. Neither of us has fancy cars, it's not our thing, but hopefully that's it for another year.

Our village has been in chaos the last couple of days as they have been resurfacing several major roads. At times traffic has been gridlocked and the pavements have been mucky with bits of tarmac to dodge! It's at times like these that I am glad that we moved down into the centre of the village and I can walk everywhere. 

Yesterday I worked and in the evening K had Guides on zoom. Unfortunately, her Guide group is one of the few in our area that decided not to resume face to face meetings after Easter. It's a shame with the nice weather and long evenings that they haven't been able to do outside meets. This week they made a bee hotel which is already sat in one of our trees. At the beginning of May they planted wild flower seeds and sunflower seeds and they are coming on nicely.

Today has been a quiet day.  Hubby needed to go into the Office so had to use my car so after steaming all the floors and doing the ironing I sat in the garden with my book and I must confess at one point I had a little snooze! My sleep hasn't been the best the last couple of nights so I needed it, or at least that's my excuse!

Well not the most exciting writing but the weekdays are pretty ordinary now we're back in our usual routine. 

 Friday morning was Daughter D's late start so out for breakfast we went. We decided to try somewhere different, a Cafe that is independent, and has been in Newton Abbot for about 25 years, called The Country Table. D had a lovely cooked breakfast and milkshake and I had a toasted teacake and a cappuccino.  It's lovely to spend time with each Daughter, on their own, for some time each week just to make sure all is well with them.  Afterwards we had a look in a couple of charity shops and D managed to get a bag for school for £3 so she was happy.

Saturday morning, as it was sunny and I knew the forecast for today was dire, we walked up to our bigger park and got coffee and ice creams from our mobile coffee van. K and L went off and played and I sat in the sunshine and caught up with a friend who was also there. I then came home and spent an hour with Hubby tidying up the garden. This Friday evening Daughter S is having some friends over for bubbles and nibbles as a belated celebration for her 21st back in March so the pressure is on for us to get everything looking ship shape!. Lunchtime my Sister and Brother in Law called in for lunch.  They have rented a holiday cottage near Totnes for this coming week. After lunch, as they couldn't get into the cottage till 5, we took the beach bag over to Teignmouth and me and my Sister sat on the beach while K and L went swimming and Hubby and Brother in Law took their dog for a walk. We had a very pleasant couple of hours catching up and finished off with ice creams. 

Today the weather has been truly awful. It has rained all day, very heavily this afternoon, so the girls have caught up with schoolwork, made some cakes and I have read a bit more of my Cormoran Strike book which I am enjoying and am about a third of the way through. Hubby has been painting our hall stairs and landing which is a big job. He's been really busy with work so the diy has unfortunately had to take a bit of a back seat the last couple of months but with the stamp duty holiday ending  hopefully it will all calm down a bit and he can get some more of the house finished. We will have been here three years in September and although I knew it was a complete top to bottom job I did not envisage it taking this long. Needless to say we will not be buying another doer upper!.

I grew some nasturtiums from seed but when we went to Cornwall on holiday they got a little frazzled. I still planted them out in my border and this week I have been rewarded with one flower! This rose must have come  with the house but I don't remember ever seeing it before. I am sure I would remember such a vibrant colour and it smells amazing. The rose I planted in memory of my Mum, back in March, is doing really well and currently has thirty buds on it so hopefully soon it will be a mass of colour.

Well I'm going to go and put my pj's on and read some more of my book.

Well Monday was a bit of a wash out here in Devon. Although not cold it rained all day which was a bit of a drag.  I went out for coffee with S in the morning. We went to Sainsburys on the edge of Torquay and had a good look around the store before we went in the Cafe. My Dad had given me some money last weekend so I treated myself to a black and white print summer dress, a mini grater and a Bundt tin! I have never owned such a tin but during lockdown have seen various recipes for a Bundt cake on different television programmes so decided it was time I had one.

Tuesday I worked which goes quickly even though it's a long day.  We go to a "Music with Mummy" group in the morning, stopping off at our village park on the way home for snack. Then lunch takes a while with four little ones to feed and clean. Four of the six children have a sleep so we have our lunch, write up our records and entertain the other two. We then have the school run to do and collect a couple of after  school children to be looked after, then it's the park by the school for an hour, home and two little ones to be given tea. It's tiring but I enjoy every minute of it.

Today was nice and sunny so I called for a friend I used to work with and we walked to the park and got  coffees and brownies from the mobile coffee van and had a lovely couple of hours catching up in the sunshine. I made sure dinner was ready and on the table for 5.30 so that afterwards we could go over to Teignmouth for an hour for K and L to have a swim in the sea. The tide was in but we found a sliver of sand to sit on and watch them. They lasted about 45 minutes before they wanted to get out and dry off. It was lovely sat there watching  people swimming, people out in kayaks and people in sailing boats. It's lovely living in a holiday resort as it feels like you are on holiday too. Now we are home and clearing up from dinner while the girls have nice hot showers.

Work again tomorrow in the morning - rushing towards the weekend again.

 Oh my goodness, another week has gone in a flash!

Four more weeks of school and then hopefully I can settle back into a slower pace of life again. It really is such a shock to be back so busy. This week has been taken up by the usual work, after school clubs and domestic stuff. Hubby and I have managed a couple of trips out for coffee together. Both times, as the weather was so nice, we got take away coffees and sat in a lovely park with them. With the girls at school and hubby working mainly from home it's lovely to snatch an hour here and there to just be a couple. "Like when you were courting" as my Mother-in-Law said yesterday when we were chatting to her!.

I took a photo of my succulents earlier in the week. I have moved them to outside the back door as they are so lovely at the moment. They all came back from a trip to Cornwall last summer. There was an honesty stall outside Porthcurno Museum so a couple came from there and a couple came from a box outside someones house, again with an honesty box.  They have really grown and multiplied.  I came back with two new ones at half term from St Michaels Mount and they are also in pots outside my back door.

Still busy reading. The Adele Parks book was really good with a few twists in the storyline. The Robert Galbraith book I am about to start - it is a mighty tome coming in at 927 pages. It is going to be far too big and heavy to read in a bed and by the size of the book I'm guessing it will have an involved plot so I hope I can keep up with it! That is the final library book on the pile so I shall then start on my big pile of books bought last summer from amazon and various charity shops. I reckon that will keep me going till Christmas.

                                      

This weekend we have been up to Wiltshire to see my Dad for Fathers Day.  We have had a lovely couple of days but very tiring. As we both come from the same town we have a lot of family to try and fit in to seeing on visits let alone friends. The traffic was very busy travelling up but we got to my Dads for lunch and had a pleasant couple of hours catching up. We then left him to his sport and went and collected Hubby's Mum for a couple of hours mooching around the charity shops and having a coffee out. Although Hubby's Mum is 76 she is as fit as a flea and is always up for a trip out somewhere. We dropped her home and then got fish and chips to eat with my Dad.  I will be glad when the last restrictions are lifted and hopefully the rule of 6 will go and we can take my Dad out for dinner. We had a couple of games of scrabble, which is K and L's favourite thing to play when we visit, before we went off to our Premier Inn room.

This morning we had a walk around the town, and came across this family of swans in the river at the Town bridge. We then went up to my Dad's and carried on with our planned barbecue even though the weather was pretty dull and miserable. Hubby cooked us a lovely lunch and there were enough leftovers for my Dad to have for his dinner tomorrow night. We said goodbye to him about three and went up to Hubby's Mum's house for a couple of hours where my Sister-in-Law and Husband joined us so it really has been a busy weekend catching up with everyone.  We are home, exhausted but it has been lovely to see everyone. 

 

 Well this week has absolutely whizzed by.  There was endless washing from our holiday and all the usual housework.

Monday K and L had an inset day so we met some friends at the beach. We had a really lovely few hours. K and C are best friends and C's sister J is a year older than L but they are in the same class at school. All four of them get on really well together so once we get into good weather we meet up every week at the beach. We have been doing this for the last four or five years but I think this is the last year that K and C will want to as they are 13 now. We left the beach, collecting D from a friends house on the way, dashed into home for L to wash the sand off her, and then she went on to gymnastics!

Tuesday I worked. Wednesday, first thing, Hubby and I went out for a coffee and then I did more washing and tackled the overflowing pile of ironing. I have also been trying to get outside every day for an hour tidying up the borders around our patio area.

Thursday I worked in the morning and then after lunch Hubby and I went to B & Q to buy three lavender plants and some campanula plants for the borders I have cleared.

Friday, D didn't have to at school until 11.30 so we went into Newton Abbot. I took some more books back to the library. There are just three left to read and D dragged me out before I could get tempted by anything. Once those three are read I am starting on the pile of ones I have bought over the last year. After the library we went and got some breakfast which was very yummy and had a look in a couple of shops. After I had dropped her at school I came home and tackled yet more ironing and gave the house a tidy ready for the weekend.

This morning we went to Morrisons and bought a tray of 20 geraniums, 2 trays of lobelia, 2 trailing fuchsia, 4 bush fuchsia and a tray of mixed plants for patios. This set us back the grand sum of £14 which is amazing value. Late morning, as the weather was so glorious, we packed up a picnic and the beach bag and went to the beach at Meadfoot. We had a lovely few hours relaxing while K and L swam in the sea and finished off with an ice cream. D didn't come with us as she was working in our village hairdressers. We got home late afternoon and then spent a pleasant hour in the garden pottering with our new plants.  They are all in and looking good. For dinner we had Jamie Olivers butter chicken which was really simple to make and very tasty.

I am still reading a lot although I have forgotten lately to mention what book I am reading.  I did take a couple of the books my sister gave me to Cornwall but I didn't like either of them. Luckily, I had also taken a library book with me. Currently, I am reading The Way Back by Jamie Fewery which is good.

                                  

Tomorrow, I need to take K and L to sort out their Fathers Day presents and then I intend to spend the afternoon in the garden.  A Barbecue has been requested for dinner tomorrow night so that will by Hubby's department!

 We are home from our week in Cornwall. We had an absolutely fabulous time with lots of sunshine and time spent on different beaches.

We stayed in a 3 bed mobile home on the Globe Vale Holiday Park which was in the countryside between the coastal towns of Porthtowan and Portreath. We love this area of North Cornwall and have been visiting this area for a good few years now. We actually lived in this area of Cornwall, over near Perranporth, for three years and eldest Daughter S was born there.   We hadn't stayed at this site before but it was a real find. There was a bar and restaurant and a good playground but it wasn't big and rowdy like some sites can be.  The mobile home wasn't very old and had a nice grassy area for sitting out on and a picnic bench for outdoor dining. It had full length windows in the living room looking out over fields.

Once we had unpacked we went to Portreath and had an ice cream and a walk along the beach and then came back to camp and enjoyed a barbecue.

On Sunday we packed up all our beach stuff and a picnic and went back to Portreath for the day as the sun was shining. It was glorious and S and K spent most of the day in the sea with their bodyboards whilst D prefers to lie out in her bikini sunbathing!. L went in the sea and managed to stub her toe almost taking the toe nail off so she spent most of the week hobbling about!

Once we were back at camp and the girls had showered we walked from the site to look at Wheal Peevor tin mines. These are amazing and you could walk up inside them. We finished off our day with a meal out at Wetherspoons in Cambourne. So lovely to be somewhere different, visiting different beaches and having a meal and a glass of wine out.

First thing on Monday we went and looked at Gwennap Pit just outside Redruth.  This is an amazing tiered amphitheatre like structure tucked away in a small village behind a church, which stands as a memorial to the Methodist movement in the 18th century.

From here we went and had a wander around Redruth, a small market town, formerly a mining town and I managed to find a couple of things in the charity shops. One was a Lazy Jacks skirt and the other Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's book Veg so I was happy. After lunch we went to Godrevy beach which has a huge expanse of sand and which we only discovered last summer. It has a National Trust car park which we were lucky to get a space in so parking was free.

In the evening we went to Porthtowan and walked up the hill overlooking the beach.

Tuesday Afternoon Hubby needed to catch up on some work e mails so he dropped us off in Porthtowan and me and the girls spent the afternoon on the beach.

Wednesday we had tickets for the gardens at St Michaels Mount. I was worried as the forecast said it was going to be heavy rain Wednesday morning but luckily we had a huge amount of rain Tuesday night but woke to a dry day Wednesday. We were booked for 10.30 and had to get the ferry over from Marazion which only takes about 5 minutes. As we arrived the sun came out and we had a lovely couple of hours exploring, having a coffee sat outside the cafe overlooking Marazion and I bought a couple of plants to bring home. Once we arrived back at Marazion we sat on the beach for an hour and had our picnic. By now it had clouded over so we gave some friends in Perranporth a call and went and spent a couple of hours sat in their garden catching up on the last couple of years. A used to work in the Bank in Truro with Hubby when we lived in Cornwall and we have kept in touch with her and her Husband D. They are a lovely couple and we always visit when we are on holiday down there.

Thursday morning we had to leave S at the mobile home and make ourselves scarce as she had an interview on teams for a job in Swindon Hospital.  It isn't her first choice but she wanted interview experience. Ideally she would like to work in the Exeter hospital, Torbay as second choice and Bath or Plymouth as third choice. We left her to it and went over to a very pretty village called St Agnes for a walk around and a coffee out. It is a thriving village with lots of nice individual shops and cafes. We had a lovely coffee sat outside in the sunshine and it all felt very continental - just for a moment I could have believed I was in my beloved France! By the time we got back to the campsite S had already been offered a job at the hospital. She is going to accept for the moment, in case she doesn't get anything better offered, and is actually torn because the preceptorship programme they offer is really good. After lunch we went back down to the beach but it was very blowy so we only lasted a couple of hours before everyone had had enough.

After dinner we went to find Carn Brea monument. Wherever you are in the Cambourne area you can see it high up on a hill and S said she wanted to walk up around it. Off we went up a very bumpy track hoping we wouldn't meet anyone coming the other way, to find it. It was very windy up there and amazingly just a bit further along the track is a restaurant. I don't think I'd want to be driving up there in the winter for a meal.

The last picture is the restaurant.

Friday was our last day so went for a final trip to the beach early in the morning as S and K wanted another session of bodyboarding and it was a lot warmer than the previous day. After lunch we packed up the car and headed home.

Today has been spent doing endless washing and tidying up the garden.

Well what an epic post and hopefully I haven't forgotten anything!