I'm back again

Back home again, facing a return to work tomorrow after what feels like a really long holiday, even though I've only been away from the office for 7 days.

Prague was lovely. It is always nice but the weather was surprisingly clement, with sunshine and gentle warmth, ideal for wandering about streets and climbing hills. And gazing at light-up yellow plastic penguins.First Born was very enamoured of the penguins. He navigated Prague entirely by reference to where we were in relation to said penguins.

We walked and walked and walked some more, climbed Petrin Hill up to the top and then, when we got there, decided we were too footsore to climb up the replica Eiffel Tower so we sat on a bench drinking Pepsi and telling silly stories instead. We took the boys to our favourite cafe for hot chocolate and soy milk lattes, and to our favourite bar where we ate far more pork than was good for us. We visited the church where Czech resistance fighters were pinned down by Nazi soldiers after the assasination of Reinhard Heydrich and the crypt where they died after being betrayed by one of their own. We visited the zoo and watched tigers having lunch. They have marginally better table manners than our sons, I reckon.
Second Born took that photograph. He is both braver and more determined than I am!

Second Born also celebrated his 11th birthday on our last day in Prague by eating a small vat of Nutella at breakfast and buying himself a couple of puppets with some of his birthday money. Puppets are very popular in Prague and one of his purchases is a traditional marionette, albeit in the form of a chimpanzee. The other one.......defies description. I will try to persuade SB to let me photograph it for a later post. You'll thank me, I promise.

We came home from Prague and almost immediately set off for the Corbies for a few days. We had a few little jobs to do around there and one large one: the freezing cold and very windy winter had not been kind to the roof of our summerhouse. (The bricks are there to stop the felt ripping further!)

Now, Husband and I and Husband's sister are not what you would call handy. We have never re-roofed a shed before, but we decided to have a go. And I think that, given it was done by two lawyers and a training consultant, the result wasn't half bad.

Poor sister-in-law got the job of climbing onto the roof to rip off the old felt and then stick down the new (the roof isn't strong enough to support more than one person at a time). We basically shoved her up there at about 2pm and didn't let her down again until 7pm. She required a lot of beer and mini chocolate rolls to recover. As did we.

Next job: getting the barbecue ready so we can start really enjoying ourselves down there! My mum and dad are having the boys to stay with them at the end of next week and then bringing them down to the Corbies for Easter Weekend. Can't wait.