The week so far

Monday
We headed out for our walk (Nic, Peter and me) at 8.15am. First down to Cobo and then North to Ladies bay, across the common to Pembroke and over bunker hill towards Bordeaux. We hit 10.00 miles on the GPS just before Bordeaux kiosk and Peter was then given the option of stopping for a bus or keeping on. He was keen to complete a half marathon distance so we headed on towards St Sampson and back towards St Peter Port. It was clear that if we walked home the distance would be over 15 miles so we jumped on a bus from Bulwer Avenue to town and then walked home from there. Peter crossed his virtual 13.1 mile finishing line close to home (with a Usain Bolt style celebration on the line) in 5hours 18mins and by the time we reached our front door we had walked 13.44 miles. Nicola (knee) and I (feet) hobbled around for the rest of the day getting the house cleared out a bit more, Peter ran around as if he had just finished a normal short walk with no ill effect whatsoever!!

Tuesday
Major clearing out of the house plus a trip to town to collect Joseph's new made-to-measure sleeping bag, and to sort out the paperwork for our New Zealand bank account. It was Sian's last day at work and we were both very sad (so was Sian) - as ever the boys were unmoved, but they really will miss her a lot. Looking forward to her wedding on Sark on Saturday, the weather forecast is looking good.

Wednesday
Final push to get the house cleared out. Joseph and Luke went in to nursery for the day - an unusual experience for Luke who cried so much in the morning that he was upgraded to the pre-school room so that he had Joe for company. Peter couldn't believe his luck when he was left to watch TV all morning whilst mum & dad tidied and emptied the house. He soon worked out that it wasn't going to be such a great day after all when the TV was packed up and taken away just after lunch! For a long time it felt like it was never going to end. Runs to the charity shops & reclamation yard, runs to storage and the recycling bins and ever filling skip bags didn't seem to make a dent, but finally around 4pm the house was (more or less) empty except for a single bedroom with a mountain of kit ready for its voyage around the globe.

We took the boys down to the storage centre to show them our storage room (by now crammed full of our stuff) before taking them back to the empty house, thought it might be worth providing some proof that we did still have their toys/furniture/bikes rather than them thinking it might never be seen again.

We had dinner sitting on the kitchen floor on a picnic rug. Nicola and I had some very spicy pakora which Luke insisted on trying; it didn't go down well. It didn't go down well the second time, or the third or fourth either- I think the spices might have been giving him short term memory loss.

Luke spent the last hour before bed listing things that were missing and telling me that they were in storage: "my chair.....gone....storage, pillows.....gone....storage". Makes a change from "my aeroplane, mummy aeroplane, daddy ferry" which is what we've had for several days now.

For those who don't know the Guernsey legal system - we have to go to court tomorrow morning for the house sale to go through. Peter will be coming along with us - his first taste of court at age six (and he doesn't even live in Bellshill).