200 days

It's a lovely sunny day here, and the ice cream man has just been along our road so it was 99's all round (Nicky's pupil even had one!). Jake is wearing his Chelsea strip and has just started to watch the build up to the Cup Final. He's hoping that he'll be able to brag to the people a few doors down from us in a few hours time, as they've got an Everton flag draped over their balcony.

200 days today until we go on holiday to Florida (and we've got two more holidays lined up before then - a week in Dorset at the start of the summer holidays and a 4 day cruise at the end of the summer). We're pretty much all set now, as we've finalised flight and accommodation arrangements. We're really looking forward to staying at the Beach Club Villas, which whilst we've been there for meals before (as well as occasional sneaky parking for Epcot!) it'll be our first time staying there.





As always there will be new things to do in Florida when we are there. The temptation to have a trip to one or both of Universal and Sea World will be pretty strong, as they will both have new coasters which since our last visit. Two new DVC venues will be open as well, the Treehouse Villas and Bay Lake Towers.








There are some pictures of one of the grand villas at Bay Lake on Allears, and they do look rather splendid. The only problem is that a week in peak season is 1287 points - ouch!! That's more than we could manage if we both carried forward one year's points and borrowed another year! Still a trip to the Treehouse Villas could be on the cards in a couple of years time - the good thing about them is that they do three bed villas for the same number of points as a two bed at SSR. That way we could take Nanny and Grandad, and Jake could take a friend, and there would be enough space for everyone to have a room (with Jake + friend sharing the twin room). Allears also has some good pictures of the Treehouses.

Front garden

We decided to get Mike to do the rebuilding of the garden wall for us at Haig, and that we would take on the front garden by ourselves. As always, stage one is clearance, and I must say that we've made some fantastic progress yesterday and today - we've knocked down all of the wall to the left of the gate looking out (well, those bits of it that hadn't fallen down already) and we've pretty much cleared the garden. We liberally applied the weedkiller before we left, and hopefully that will have soaked in well before the rain started. Next time we go we can do some more raking up and digging over, and then I think that we should be ready for membrane and gravel.






(Lots more Haig photos now uploaded to Flickr.)

We also had a trip over to B&Q this afternoon to make some notes of prices for a few things:

• light fitting for kitchen
• interior door handles
• paint (lots of it - walls, ceilings, gate, garage, garage door ...)
• sprayer + lots of stain for garden fence
• wood and plastic sheeting for new garage windows

Keeps us out of mischief!

Bank holiday weekend

We've arrived at the long weekend, and amazingly the weather seems to be OK. Mind you, it's clouded over and got a bit cooler in the last couple of hours. Typical really, as I'd been down to Asda earlier on and stocked up with BBQ supplies. Still, we can always have a BBQ tea, even if we end up cooking and/or eating it indoors!

Lots to report since my last blog, but hardly surprising as it was four weeks ago. Most notably we now own two houses rather than one, having completed on the Haig purchase at the start of the month. Since then the house clearance has been completed (thanks to Uncle Martin) and all of the wallpaper has been stripped off the walls, mostly by Nicky and her Mum and Dad. I've been fairly useless in amongst all of this activity, partly due to the inconvenience of having to go to work, but also due to the fact that I got a little over zealous with the electric hedge trimmers a couple of weeks ago, and cut one of my fingers rather badly - enough to warrant a trip to A&E. I've now been officially banned from picking them up again.

As well as all of our own activity on Haig, we've had a steady stream of building and window companies along to give us quotes. We've chosen a window company and paid them their deposit, and hopefully windows and doors will all be replaced within the next fortnight. Mike from YDIY will be doing the building work for us, as well as arranging the electrical and plumbing work, and we're currently waiting on a kitchen design from B&Q. It's all happening!

Holiday news has also been exciting in the last week or so. Firstly, John has booked for us all to go on a 4-night mini cruise towards the end of the summer holidays. We'll be going from Southampton to Cork and back, and we'll be on Independence of the Seas, which is one of Royal Caribbean's largest boats (at least until Oasis is launched at the end of the year). We're thoroughly looking forward to that already - 14 weeks today. I think that we'll have a fairly busy time trying to enjoy all that the ship has to offer in just four days.

Disney holiday news is also good stuff. We phoned DVC member services this week and have been able to change our booking over to the Beach Club Villas, which means that we'll be staying just a short walk away from Epcot. Also, we've sorted out our flights today, and decided to be a bit extravagant and book for premium economy, after we enjoyed our taster on our outbound flight last time. Even managed to save a bit of money off the normal premium fare by using some of our flying club points, so at least we've finally managed to get some value out of them.

As you can see from the top of this page, I have also joined Twitter. No particular reason other than people keep talking about it and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I've been able to link this site to Twitter, so that it will be possible to see my latest Tweeting (!) from here!