Our New Life in Devon

 I've started to make some progress around the house yesterday and today. Unfortunately, both dogs are now on heat so constant floor cleaning and disinfecting is necessary, as I don't believe in spaying. I have bred 2 litters from the eldest (Molly) who is so laid back she's horizontal lol. Really great with children and not a bad bone in her body. We kept one of the pups,Lola, (which is why I bred in the first place) but I would never breed her. She's never been socialised with adults or children when she was a young pup as it was Covid time. We'd just moved house 10 days before she was born, knew nobody here, and people crossed the road if they saw us walking her as a young pup. Rumours (completely false) were going around that you could catch Covid from dogs, hence the standoff. She is great with the grandchildren but barks a lot when anyone visits. Quite nervous at times, and ran under the table shaking when she saw a hedgehog in the garden! I did have a lady me...

Well the last few months we've spent travelling to and fro South Gloucestershire babysitting for our granddaughter while daughter attended various hen parties and weddings. Two in Majorca, and 1 in Germany meant she was away for a few days and up to a week. Most of the time granddaughter stayed here in the school holidays as she loves Devon where we live. We weren't alone here for more than a week as both sons and both granddaughters have also visited several times. Infact we had been back home just over 4 hours last week when Mark arrived for a couple of nights! Our eldest son, grandson and eldest granddaughter left yesterday as they came for the weekend.  Today we went on a trip to a National Trust property near Plymouth with the U3A, a group for retired people. It was a large stately mansion house set in huge grounds. I did enjoy looking around the house and seeing how they lived many years ago, but did find it quite exhausting as I have COPD. Saltram House  The Saltram Est...

 Daughter came with her friend's daughter who is the same age as our granddaughter. She's very tidy, well behaved and no trouble at all. I've said she can stay any time.  Daughter noticed her ring doorbell had stopped working the second day she was here! Her brother has a spare key and went to check. All downstairs power was off and her freezer totally defrosted! Nothing was salvageable. She's very upset as had just done a huge shop for frozen food! They went home after a few more days and son tested what was tripping  the fuses. It's the central heating boiler, which was guaranteed so they came to fix it but no fault was found. There's another tank upstairs which heats water with the solar panels and is connected to the downstairs boiler. So she's now having to get an engineer in to fix it. They think it's probably a float broken. On the plus side with the boiler turned off her freezer and other appliances are all working fine. We went to a charity ...

 At the moment we're looking after the granddaughter as our daughter is at a wedding near Bath. They both came on Friday and daughter left on Saturday. She's back on Monday, tomorrow and staying here for a few days. Son also came Thursday for a couple of nights as he's working all over the Bank Holiday. Granddaughter went to watch the bowling matches in Dawlish today with OH. She's very well behaved with us on her own. It's was very hot here today at 28C so I spent the day at home. I managed to get 3 loads of washing dried outside in the hot sun. Putting it in and out was a problem though as I started to feel a bit dizzy in the heat. I get heat exhaustion regularly in the hot weather, especially if the temperature goes over 24C. It doesn't help that I have a lung condition so my breathing was a bit laboured at times. I won't be going out very much until it cools down a bit. OH and granddaughter took the dogs out at 9pm tonight. They always stay close and hav...

 Daughter and Granddaughter came to stay for a few days during the school holidays. As it was my birthday they brought cards and chocolates. Son sent a lovely bouquet 💐 of flowers which were delivered. Our eldest son video called me and we had a long chat.  A few days after they left we spent the weekend at daughter's house to care for Granddaughter as daughter was away on a Hen do in Wales. We visited our eldest son, DIL and the grandchildren. Son spent a long time showing us his latest gadget- a 3D printer. Very into gadgets and technology is our eldest. He actually works programming circuit boards or chips to make new equipment work, ie like medical machines or airplane parts etc. We visited my BIL while we were there too, as we haven't seen him for a while. Came home on Monday and arranged to visit my friend in Exeter on Friday last week. Then our nephew messaged wanting to come for the weekend with his girlfriend. We said no this time, as OH is away most of Saturday and ...

 Easter weekend went well here with nephew and his girlfriend staying for one night. They booked a hotel in Torquay for the weekend and came back for Sunday night before leaving Monday. While they were in Torquay our son popped down and stayed Saturday night so we definitely weren't lonely over Easter, lol. I fell asleep on the sofa on Friday afternoon. I never ever sleep in the day unless I'm ill, so I knew I was sickening for something. Sure enough, on Saturday, I was running a temperature and getting stomach pains signalling another infection. It's Easter, so our doctors surgery is closed. The junior doctors are on strike, and it wasn't too bad, so I just dosed up on paracetamol. The last time I had this, the GP sent me to hospital urgent care. The problem was that the 3 lots of IV antibiotics really messed up my whole digestive system for 5 weeks, so I don't want that again. I'm going to make a GP appointment today as they are open as normal now. Daughter ha...