Holidays, NCT Woes and Tiles

The school holidays are in full swing now.

The first couple of weeks were fabulous and we spent as much time at the beautiful beaches around us as possible. We went over to England then to visit friends and family and had a fantastic trip to Butlins at Bognor Regis for 5 days - the highlight for the kids. The weather was fantastic while we were there but new was in Ireland the weather was terrible - rain, rain and more rain.... I'm glad we weren't here for that!

Butlins was great fun. We have been 3 years in a row now and each year the boys have wanted to do different things. This year it was bowling, watching all of the Skyline Gang shows and swimming. We also managed to squeeze a trip to Legoland which was expensive but thankfully we had free child tickets, the Natural History and Science museums in London. The boys loved it and are getting to that age where they want to understand more about the world around them and can handle the trip on the train and tube. Liam loved the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum and Conor loved the planes and steam engines at the science museum.

We all came back with colds and coughs. With swine flu rampant around Essex, we have shied away from everyone since we returned just in case we had a mild form. But we have no high temperatures or aches and pains so hopefully we have escaped but for how long....?

We have been itching to get back to work on the house. We took a trip to Ikea when we were over and was impressed with one of their kitchens (especially the price!). I got into cleaning out the house a bit since we have been back - we have soooooo much junk - and it has spurred me on to get things moving. This afternoon we went to a tile place in Cork and bought tiles for the kitchen floor - with the grout it cost just under 1000 euro which is a lot less than we expected for the size of the room. The tiles were 13 euro sq yrd (or was it sq m?), compared to 29.99 euro in a local tile shop for the same tile! The step needed to be taken and it is done now so lets get going....!

The next thing we have to do is find a new car for Daithi - the '98 escort failed it's NCT with extremely bad emissions and serious corrosion underneath. Time to buy another..... Else it could be 5 points on Daithi's licence for a dangerous car!