Another year has gone by and a lot has happened. My parent's house was finally sold and we managed to clear it out on time for the new owners to move in. Since my last writings my children and grandchildren have prevented me from getting bored. I have been decorating at our youngest son's new home. Stripping wall paper, removing old paint, painting the ceiling and doors, putting up new wall paper ....that were the main activities on my Sunday programme for about 6 weekends in a row. The whole house had to be redecorated except for the bathroom. That kept me from mischief. The Saturdays were spent looking after 2 or 3 grandchildren that are in motion all the time except when they are asleep and I would have loved to take a nap too but I couldn't. You can imagine that, between the redecorating and the grandchildren I am a very fit granny now, I even developed some arm muscles. Not that I mind. Meanwhile, I have made a start clearing out the two rooms in our house we want to redecorate. One of the rooms is even a presentable guestroom now. The fact that my brother considered staying the night on New Year's eve meant that I had to get the room ready, clear out all the clutter and have it thoroughly cleaned. A bit of time pressure is always welcome in my case and extra motivating Still a lot needs to be done before I can say the rooms are ready, but I seem to have more energy and hopefully I will feel like this for some time to come. It was fortunate that I was energetic these past few weeks. We had a small party on my birthday with the family and a couple of our youngest son's friends as he and his girlfriend were going on holiday the next day and so they could not be with us on Christmas eve. With all 6 of our grandchildren here and 11 adults it did get a bit crowded and it was a very full house indeed. On Christmas Eve, the family again came tot our house for dinner. And on New Year's eve, my brother and sister and her 3 children had dinner at our house. My weekday evenings are still partly spent with the amateur theatre group, rehearsing 2 nights a week. The performances are on 24 and 25 January and the week of the performance we rehearse every evening. And 1 night a week I am still learning Italian. So in case you have been wondering why I hadn't written on my little blog for a while, you now know what I've been up to. We also almost booked a holiday tot Uganda, with friends that I have known since school. The trip included going tot watch gorillas. But we decided not to go, for various reasons, so we have no holidayplans as yet. There will be though and I would love to take a trip to London again, or Paris and maybe some friends can come over and stay with us now that we have a guest room. Things to look forward to in this New Year. I do hope you all have good times coming your way in 2014 and wish all of you a healthy and happy year.
