I keep waiting for my life to get un-busy, and I realised today that it probably never will. And then if it ever does, I'll probably be miserable because I'm bored and lonely. Or so I tell myself, as we muddle through our current chaos.

We have been working on the new house every evening; not sure how long we can sustain that, though, as I am starting to feel quite burned out. It makes for an awfully long day, if, as soon as we've got home from work and cooked dinner and done the dishes and helped with homework, we head out again and paint.

So far, we've managed to paint the livingroom, the kitchen, and the diningroom. It all looks very nice, I must admit. We've also ripped out the livingroom carpet, and tomorrow (gulp) we start laying the new floor.

Next week will be more of the same, though it's further complicated by the fact that we'll be celebrating Emily's birthday on the Sunday. Her actual birthday is on the 30th of December, but since we'll be travelling home from Scotland on that day, we decided to bring it forward so we could celebrate properly. We're doing quite a bit of date-shifting this holiday period, actually. We, and my parents, are going to be staying in this cottage in Scotland from the 24th to the 30th of this month. We'd wanted to travel up a couple of days earlier, but the cottage wasn't available before the 24th. So, we are going to move our family Christmas to the 26th, so that we can have a fun Christmas Eve together instead of one spent in the car. And I think we may move Steve's birthday (January 1) to a week later, depending on how he feels about it.

Can't wait till the end of next week; that's when the schools break up.



Bobby's taking leave too, so we'll all be on holiday together and things will feel properly Christmassy. I love this time of year!