End of the holiday blues….

So the week has passed by super quick. πŸ™ Back to school and work for all of us tomorrow.

We have got a few things done but still feel a little blue overall.

These are the success stories;

  • Bedroom furniture has been ordered and the deposit paid – six to eight weeks and we should be a GO
  • Helped Clare and Warren move into their new pad on Tuesday – not sure if we were help or hindrance but we helped nonetheless πŸ™‚
  • Trailer ordered and collected (yesterday) from a company in Kettering so we nipped in to see Kerrie on the way back – their house is coming along very nicely and will be simply awesome when it is complete.
  • Tractor mower and smaller petrol mower ordered and paid for – delivery in roughly ten days to two weeks πŸ™‚
  • Chesterfield seat cushions taken to a guy in Tingley to make some ne cushions in a very nice tartan material plus some scatter cushions – great deal and will look to have them make us a bed and chaise longue for the bedroom – will be really nice looking at the other gear that guy has built – and V he an have all the sparkly bits πŸ™‚
  • Oliver out for day with Joe and Karis and Riley (Friday, Tuesday and Monday respectively
  • Tonight Greg helped Simon figure out the shower leak – Simon had already opened up the small access hole from inside Elliot’s bedroom – the trick was switching the shower on and watching for a leak – it came rather quickly from the Grohe unit itself so once we figured that and got the unit out, deconstruction showed water staining where we believe the leak to be – Greg has taken a part away for a rubber a ring to hopefully fix it – failing this we will look for a replacement unit – at least we now KNOW that the problem is NOT the pipes underneath the shower itself as they would definitely be a BUGGER to put right…
  • We have bought a fab fire pit to enable us to sit around in the summertime and roast marshmallows etc
  • We have researched garden furniture and Costco seem to offer the best option – we just need to figure out if we think we need to spend almost Β£2k on four seats and a small table with burner built in (the seats at reclining spinning beasts so not overly expensive for the size etc
  • Sorted the office – we now have a sorted office setup
  • Sorted the home wifi – with Lee’s help we have bought new wireless access points and router that now give wifi all around the house- BIG thumbs up

So, I guess we have got through loads of things – it just feels like we have wasted a lot of time along the way…

Happy holidays 😀

Dog chews

Simon came home knowing that there was a problem with the weather forecasting Raspberry Pi in the office so this morning when we got back from dropping Penny off for her new headrests, he reset the little Pi. 

Not long after he noticed that while wifi was indeed operational in the office, there was actually no internet connection. So, he set about checking to see if the network cables in the office were OK and if the access point was experiencing an issue. Then back to the main house to see if there was a problem there. All seemed OK so the concern became whether a small animal had chewed through the cab,e en-route to the office in the garden – a quick visual inspection suggested that this was probably not the case.

OK! So maybe the cable end needed recrimping in the shoe closet where perhaps one of the kids had thrown their shoes in and inadvertently caused the cable to not quite be in great shape.

Soon after, the surveyor from John Lewis arrived Adams Simon opened the kitchen door to let the chap in, it became super obvious what had happened – there were black cables sticking out from the house wall – yes, in case you have not got up to speed, the DAMNED dog has chewed the bloody wires on their way into the house…. GGGGRRRRRRRR

He is closing in on being evicted – the amazing of damage the little sod is creating at the moment is far too significant….

Screen a plenty

Lady Penelope has been at RAM Mobile all day today having rear seat entertainment screens and TV tuner fitted. She now has some huge 9″ screens in the front headrests for the rear passengers along with wireless headphones and dual DVD drives. The setup is pretty impressive and can even distribute sound through the car sound system should all passengers wish to listen to whatever media is showing on the screens.

All we need to do is setup a Google Chromecast to the setup (there is a spare HDMI port ready and waiting) and we are all set for long and short journeys πŸ™‚

Winner.

Biking in the snow

Yesterday, Simon and Ed nipped out on the bikes in driving snow on the far North Yorkshir hills. We drove in Penny all the way past Richmond to a little town called Reeth where we left the car and head out. It was a nice road climb to the hills where the snow appeared and gradually got deeper and deeper to the point where we had almost 6 inches of snow to contend with and no easily recognisable paths across the fields πŸ™‚

Ultimately we were faced with whiteout conditions where you could not see more than 20 feet in any direction and Simon actually found it was getting harder to see the route that Ed had taken ahead of him – the driving snow felt like grit being thrown into our faces 😐

We followed the road until we made it back to the main road that we had come in on, and then followed the four miles back to the car – cold wet hands took almost 15 minutes to come back to sense when we did get back and we had managed 20km of a 32km ride. The views prior to the whiteout were utterly outstanding and the bike shop / cafe were awesome – lovely home made cakes and hot food along with fresh ground coffee – we will deffo be heading back there asap – hopefully Lee will join us next time πŸ™‚