Friends

We had such a good afternoon yesterday with the Puddles and the Beans. I had gone over in that direction (a 2-hour drive) to collect a wooden Tripp-Trapp style highchair for Isabelle, to match Tamsin's, that I'd won on Ebay (which has turned out to be a great bargain - new and unused for £31.50 instead of the new price of £84.99). So I arrived while Merry was on the phone and had a warm and chatty welcome from Fran and Maddy which was delightful. Fran played delightfully with Isabelle and Tamsin fell with great delight upon the big pile of My Little Ponies - I've never seen so many together in one place before! I got the chance to browse some HE resources that I've heard about but never seen, so they get confirmed on my 'to buy' list ... (oops) and chatted a bit, but not enough, with Merry. Then all the Beans arrived and it was lovely to see them all, and with 8 girls all playing together it was a loud and lively afternoon! We left around 7pm after a substantial plateful of macaroni cheese and both girls were fast asleep within minutes so I had a peaceful drive home, and managed to successfully transfer them both into bed when we got home.

Today has been mixed. We've had a nice time but had bad financial news. Bill's car was in for repair/service so he was using mine, so I had to borrow a friend's car to get to the church group this morning and get a lift to the local Home Ed group this afternoon. But we had a nice time this afternoon and I chatted more with the mum of the 3 and 5 year old girls that we met last month, and she was more talkative and friendly this time. In fact, we have arranged to get together in a couple of weeks and I think that's going to be a really nice friendship for Tamsin, and Isabelle in due course, to know other locally HEd girls. But the news on Bill's car has been dire and it looks like his Astra that he only bought 2nd hand earlier this year was a bad'un and will basically have to be scrapped, so he will have to revert to his old Citroen that thankfully we never quite got round to getting rid of. However that is showing its age too, and I'm really not happy about the Subaru estate that I have been driving as it just feels like maybe the steering is going wrong on that, so we may have to be in the market for 2 new cars when we really don't have the money for any such things. We already have a loan, a credit card debt and re-mortgaged earlier this year. We can afford to eat and pay bills, thankfully, but cars, holidays and clothes are not so easy to come by.

So I'll be off to bed and maybe I'll dream of the perfect money-making idea that will relieve all our financial problems .....