Phew!

It's been and incredibly busy few days, and after a 3 hour round trip to Heathrow airport to take my brother in law and nephew to catch their flight back to Australia, all of our visitors have now left and continued on their travels and a lovely calmness has descended on the household.  No more cleaning, shopping, cooking or dashing here and there showing visitors the local sights. We can just stand/sit still for a little while and take a deep breath, before the next round of activity begins, i.e. getting packed for our week in Norfolk with some relatives.  The dog has been stripped this week, so she might get a bit chilly now and her woolly coat may need to come with us).  She looks so different.   I must admit that I prefer her with more hair and a scruffy countenance.

Now the weather has turned a bit colder, I'm having to pack a wider range of clothing than I did for our holiday in Italy.  A few jumpers and more trousers than shorts, but we may get lucky and get a few days on the beach.  If not, I've picked up a stack of leaflets from the motorway services on our recent travels, so I've got a few days out to historic houses and other places lined up, in case we get any cold or rainy weather.  I've also checked out some local zumba classes on line so I could even keep exercising whilst we're away, which would be good as I've hardly done any this week.

I've got a few little errands to pop out and do in the next couple of days, but I'm in no desperate hurry.  I will enjoy pottering around packing, washing, ironing and finding the odd item to add to another charity shop box.  I'm itching to get painting with the chalk paint and have found a few other small items to use it on, but these jobs will have to wait until we get back and Little Bird has started back at school.

Also on account of the weather change, my thoughts are starting to turn to the autumn.  I'm actually looking forward to covering up and wearing lots of layers.  There's something so cosy about getting wrapped up against the cold.  I need to get a move on with our double quilt though,  I haven't touched it for months and still have just under half of it to hand quilt.  I can see a burst of activity on the quilt front happening once the school term re-starts.

Before I wish our lives away and what is left of the summer, I'm going to banish these thoughts to the back of my mind for a week or so and just enjoy what is left of the summer holidays.