26 September, 2016

Decorating

We spent the last couple of Sundays decorating the kids' rooms. This proved to be rather a different experience from that of a few years back. Now that the kids are teenagers, they are as (more?) capable of proficient decorating than we parents are. So, all four of us set to -- two with rollers and two with brushes -- and we were finished in a couple of hours. Amazing!

Of course, what took rather longer was sorting out all the junk in the kids' rooms. They did this themselves and it's incredible how much they have accumulated in a relatively short period of time. We had to do several trips to the charity shop to offload all the unwanted goods...

I've got my eye on redecorating the sitting room next, but somehow I doubt the kids will be so keen to help with a room that isn't all their own!

04 September, 2016

Life without kids

Every summer, our kids spend a few days staying with their grandparents. They always have a great time and, although we miss them hugely, it's a good opportunity for us to be a couple and do lots of nice things by ourselves.

Here's what we got up to last week:

  • We popped down to the riverside Nag's Head pub in Abingdon and sat in the lovely evening sunshine enjoying a glass of wine and a pizza.
  • We visited our local Thai restaurant, the Zabb Thai, and had a delicious (as always) dinner. We love this restaurant: the food's great, the owner is so friendly, and the restaurant is small and intimate.
  • We went to the cinema to see the latest Woody Allen film, Cafe Society.
All of this was great, but probably the best thing of all was what we did together with the kids when we picked them up. We we went to see Macbeth at Shakespeare's Globe. We really enjoyed the play -- it was imaginative and well acted and the setting was stunning.

And, of course, it was wonderful to see the kids again!