Well, the movers finally arrived, swiftly and efficiently loaded all our furniture into their truck, locked it all up for security and promptly lost the keys! The four of us searched through the whole house, numerous times, hoping they would turn up. It wasn't difficult to check, with the house being completely empty. After about an hour, we concluded that they must have fallen from Mr Moving-Man's pocket inside the truck, during loading, and probably lay buried under our stuff. At this point, we decided to climb into our car and head for Wales, leaving them to come up with a solution. This farce was, if nothing else, a welcome distraction from the thought of leaving the family home after 44 years........
It seemed that the movers managed to find a solution. Only one hour later than promised, our furniture arrived in Crickhowell and was offloaded into our new abode. The missing keys never were found. Once we were left in peace, we began the fun part of moving, arranging everything in our new home. Next day we rented a van, to rush around South Wales. First we had to buy a fridge/freezer, although the weather was so cold, we could have probably managed without! Next stop IKEA for some shelves, on which to place all those boxed books and knick-knacks. Last stop on the Grand Tour was Mumbles, where we retrieved our bed which had been with friend Trish for safe-keeping ever since our move onto Anju in 1997. Somehow we came back to our new home with a van full of furniture, having acquired a few additional, much-welcome pieces from Trish and Margaret.
After a few days in our new place, we decided to get rid of several large items we'd brought from Dad's house. Naturally it would have been easier and cheaper to get rid of them before moving them all the way to Wales but in situ, they just didn't fit in. We spent our remaining weeks in the UK improving and beautifying "The Fold", as we named our stationary home (well, both of our more mobile homes had names). Our priority was to put some lagging on the water pipes in the attic, particularly in view of the weather. How the pipes had lasted so long un-lagged, without bursting was a mystery. Perhaps the puny amount of insulation in the roof had allowed enough heat to escape upwards from the house? This too was resolved quickly.
Music Room
Lounge
A couple of days after we took up residence, the ice age seemed to descend. We were inundated with more snow than we'd seen in that part of the UK for decades. It was beautiful and, provided you didn't actually need to get anywhere, great fun. We bought sledges (for the grandchildren of course) and Phil enjoyed taking James sledging. The smaller children preferred using Christine as a pack horse, to drag them around town on their sledges!
Go faster Dodo!
The sheep don't look so happy!
We were invited to "Uncle" Jack's 90th birthday party (we later worked out that he was actually a first-cousin- once-removed to Christine). Our assigned task was to bring party sausages. In preparation we bought two dozen of Cashell of Crickhowell's home-made sausages to cook and take along. Flavours ranged from 'lamb and mint' to 'steak and horseradish', with many more in between.
Our pre-Christmas entertainment came in the form of the school nativity plays. Proud grandparents watched Gareth (4) playing Joseph, complete with traditional tea-towel headwear. Polly was a marvelous dancing mouse, a role that came naturally to one who never stops dancing. James was cast as the lead in his play, Hansel and Gretel. Hansel ate his parents out of house and home, it seemed well cast. He made his Dodo and Christine proud with his word-perfect performances.
The Rees clan planned a get-together a couple of days after Christmas. We were thrilled to be able to invite Jo and Daf to stay with us for a change. Our house was filled to bursting with all those baby essentials for Iwan and Gruff. We pondered whether the amount of stuff you needed to travel was inversely proportional to your body size, it certainly seemed to be the case! Still, the house was also filled with more precious family and lots of fun too!
Christmas Dinner
Gruff enjoying his first family Christmas party!
The second of January brought another attempted reunion of Christine's family, in honour second-cousin Andrew's visit from Israel. We gathered in Shrewsbury from far and wide. Family members pored over the photo albums Christine had assembled from the three drawers of photos she had sorted through. It's always wonderful to have a family get-together for something happy!
Siobhan, Rachel and Janet enjoying the photo album
I'll have to find room for this photo now, too!