Rest in Peace (Great) Grandpa Rust, we love you xx

Today was the funeral of a beloved Grandfather and Great Grandfather.

It was a very emotional time with a wonderful service of remembrance at Warley St John’s Church, followed by the burial at Warley Cemetery.

Simon decided that it would be the right thing to take Tina since Grandpa always enjoyed seeing our new cars as we bought them and took great pleasure from such.  Sadly, he was not fit enough to see Tina when we bought her last year.  It felt even more befitting when Michael read out his eulogy and amongst many things talked of Grandpa’s love for cars.  The eulogy was a very fitting description of a wonderful life that reached out and positively touched many more people than we could ever have thought.  We all know that we have a very high bar to reach as Rusts and hope that we can meet the requirements over the coming days, weeks, months and years.

It was very hard for us to watch Grandpa being laid to rest between his son and daughter in law in the cemetery, but are pleased that they are together again “enjoying” the bitter cold wind but wonderful view from where they rest.  We are so very pleased that we took the time last week in visiting the cemetery and ensuring that both graves were clean and tidy since Grandpa himself used to tend to the graves before he moved out to Horsforth a couple of years ago.  He would certainly have approved of our (OK, so Tim’s and Vicky’s) work on tidying up.

Poor Grandma is left unsure of who we all are and perhaps more importantly forgetting what has actually happened, wondering most days where her love has gone.  Time will undoubtedly help, but reading about the last few days every evening from her diary will without question bring back the memory of her loss and sadness.

Rest in Peace (Great) Grandpa, we love you always xx

 

Number 16 now in our possession

Today, we completed on our second investment rental property – number 16.  It is a three bedroom end terrace near Wakefield and we hope to get it out and ready for rent within a month.

We got the keys at around 2pm and went down to take a look to determine what we would be needing to do – we remembered that the whole house would need decorating but had forgotten what else may or may not need doing.

Oliver and Great Grandma disappeared upstairs to investigate, and the next thing that we heard was Oliver with “Grandma, what is that SMELL?”.  The previous owners had clearly done their smoking upstairs in the house so sadly it absolutely stinks of cigarette smoke 🙁 We deemed that the whole house needs a VERY DEEP clean and sadly we will also dispose of the upstairs carpets as we really don’t think that the smell will come out 🙁

We will commence the job on Wednesday or Thursday of this week and need to remove the carpets, dismantle and dispose of the garden shed (it is definitely not in good condition) and begin the task of cleaning the whole house.  Once we have completed this task, then we can crack on with the painting and the fixing of the things that are broken in the house – i.e. from a quick inspection there are a few kitchen cupboard doors that require new hinges and some door latches in the rest of the house.  There is also some work to do with the bathroom and kitchen in that they both appear to have experienced some form of water leak in the past.  For some reason there are a few doors in the house that while they have handle they do not have latches in the doors themselves 🙁

A couple of weeks and we should be in business with the place however.

 

Great weekend in the North-East

We nipped up to Great Grandma’s house on Saturday morning and were treated to a wonderful Roast Chicken lunch 🙂 We then went to take a Metro into the city centre as we had a toy shop to attend – Fenwicks.  Daddy was bitterly disappointed with the size of the toy fayre – only about 15% of the size that it used to be – guess it is a sign of the time with the bigger toy shops such as Toys R Us, but it used to be the ENTIRE 3rd floor – today it was no larger than the toy section of any average department store 🙁  But there were plenty of designer children’s wear in their place – shame we didn’t have more time to shop for such items….

We had a nice sleepover at Great Grandma’s although the boys needed separating as there was NO WAY that they were going to sleep together 🙁

Then on Sunday morning we had breakfast, went to play for an hour or so at TJ’s Jungle in Cramlington, followed by a little lunch, a quick shop and called into Claire and Mike’s before heading back to Ossett.

The boys seemingly want more sleepovers 🙂  Just could do with getting more sleep during these sleepovers 🙁

 

New stairs and upper landing carpet – going in :-)

Today, well now actually 🙂 we are having a new carpet fitted to the stairs and upstairs landing area.  It is one of the final pieces of the home remodel that we have been traversing through since Christmas 🙂

Hopefully will have a picture to show a little later on.

Olly was actually at school yesterday in what feels like only the second time since the Christmas holidays 🙂 He seemed to really enjoy himself, which is a bonus 🙂  We also took him for a long overdue haircut this morning, which while he wasn’t too pleased about during proceedings, he was somewhat happy with the sweetie that the hairdresser gave to him afterwards 🙂 At least he looks like a little boy again and not a ginger sheep !!

Elliot has been getting on great guns this week as well, since the teachers introduced him to a boy called Oliver (of all names 🙂 ) in year 2.  They seem to have really hit it off and have gone so far as inviting each other to play at each others’ houses etc.

Simon had his first real interview of 2012 yesterday as well in London – a great experience which reminded him that to work in the computer software industry is feeling like a preferred option.  We’ll see how things go with this particular company as there will be a reasonable commute (HQ is in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne of all places 🙂 although it will be easier to get to than Warrington on a wet day – that is for sure 🙂

Speaking of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, we are headed there tomorrow morning for the weekend – we are staying with Elliot and Oliver’s Great Grandma on Saturday night and then we are bringing her back to Yorkshire for a few days afterwards, so that she can spend more time with us but also to attend Great Grandpa’s funeral next Tuesday.

 

Anaemia

We went for the results of Olly’s blood tests this morning. It transpires that he has slight Anaemia and we are now being referred to a paediatrician. Good job we pushed the doctor a couple of weeks back – he was keen to just push us back out of the door with the view point that we were over reacting :-(. Hence we effectively pushed him to do the blood tests and we tend to think that he was just expecting an ‘all clear’ come back.

So now we have to wait a week for the paperwork to be raised and THEN we can apply for a first appointment. Have a feeling that this is going to take a while …. :-(. Private medical care might help here, but we don’t have it since Simon left the UK company 2 years ago. The US medical system would also have had us seen by now… 🙁

He had another test done known as ESR to determine if his body is reacting to anything out of the normal. It seems that I is non specific so only really advises if the body is dealing with something. The response to this test is simply yes, Olly’s body is dealing with something….

Looks like we will start a food diary for the little guy as we wait for an appointment – we could be some time…