11 months and counting.....

I don't know if I said before how much I enjoyed our holiday. Well I did. We have been going to Nova Scotia on holiday for a number of years now. Husband and I first went in 1996 on an off-season holiday where we just turned up with no accommodation booked and winged it. (In other words, the kind of holiday you absolutely positively cannot do once you have children.) We arrived in Halifax just as a hurricane was working its way up the eastern seaboard, threatening to make landfall in....well, Halifax. (For any Nova Scotian readers, this would be the wee hurricane that didn't do much a couple of years before Juan which definitely did.)

Husband and I had never been in a hurricane before and had no real desire to change that state of affairs, so we figured out we would be better off further north. We pretty much picked a guest house out of the phone book and off we went. We arrived at a B&B in Port Williams run by an indomitable lady, a retired school teacher called Mary. She was filling baths with water and baking bread like there was no tomorrow, just in case the hurricane decided to make life a little awkward (it didn't, as it happens). We discovered that we loved the B&B and the Annapolis Valley where it is located.

We returned to Nova Scotia in 1997 when I was pregnant with First Born and again stayed with Mary, who fussed over me and my morning sickness very nicely (her breakfasts have to be seen/eaten to be believed). When FB was born, Mary and her church ladies sent me a beautiful quilt which arrived completely out of the blue in the mail.

We didn't feel we could inflict young babies on other aircraft passengers so it was 2005 when we returned to NS with two boys in tow. Mary hadn't changed and she immediately adopted the boys. The boys, in turn, made themselves at home and cheerfully invaded her entire house. We have returned every year since, so 2008 was the boys' fourth trip and our sixth. We have travelled all over Nova Scotia as well as the neighbouring provinces of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, but we always return for at least two or three nights to stay with Mary in Port Williams. We love the place. You had probably figured that out.

We have now been home from Canada for a good week and a half so naturally we have already booked our flights for next year. 30 June 2009 here we come. Life is that bit nicer when you have a trip to Nova Scotia to look forward to! In the meantime, we have some of Mary's home-made strawberry jam in the fridge to keep us going, at least for a little while.

Random number generator

Number of children living in our house at the moment: 0
Number of children temporarily terrorising their granny and grandad for 2 nights: 2 (hee!)
Number of times husband and I will eat illicit restaurant or M&S food while they are gone: 2 (at least)
Number of days I have managed to go to work this week: 2 (yay me)
Number of times I drove round the block this morning before actually entering work car park: 3
Number of minutes I sat in car before plucking up the courage to actually go into the office: 10 (I'm working on that one)
Number of people I have spoken to in the office today: 3
Number of people I managed to make eye contact with: 0 (people are assuming I have grown my fringe really long as I so rarely raise my head these days)
Number of times Husband calls just to check I'm ok: plenty
Number of times a day I thank goodness I am married to Husband: lots

And just to cheer us all up, a wee excerpt from our holiday conversations:

First Born: What's the definition of "vet"?
Rest of us: Don't know, what?
First Born: A soggy german.

Too much exposure to Uxbridge English Dictionary at an impressionable age, I think.

Hi folks!

Just dropping in to say that I am still here. I have been away on holiday and 2 weeks in the Maritimes with the boys and the Husband was a wonderful tonic. We had a fantastic time with beautiful weather and, as always, terrifically friendly people. And I didn't cry once. But I did eat a lot of ice cream (you can't see an ice-cream called Brownies on the Moon and not try it, can you? And by "try" of course, I mean "eat three nights in a row")

I have dipped a toe into going back to work and it wasn't very good, I am afraid so I still need to work out what I am going to do there, but I am sure Husband and I will sort it out between us. In the meantime I can still raise a smile with memories of the holiday, especially Second Born, aged 8, going through airport security. Being searched after the scanner had gone off, he was asked what he had in his pocket:

"An eyeball" he replied. Of course. Silly question, really.