So what do you want to know first?

Since I last posted, we've refloored the back bedroom, had visitors, thrown Emer's birthday party in the community garden, travelled with the visitors from Reading to Dublin for another birthday party, and then the whole two-family tribe set out again for my mother's house on the Aran islands. We stayed there for a week, came home en masse with a slight detour where the children all got to walk along a mainline actual rail track because the magic smoke came out from under the train, and then the five of us came back to Reading on the usual 12-hour door-to-door track.

There was painting and talking and building and arguing and those complicated inter-parent conversations where we try to talk about our own and each others' children without upsetting anyone, and we ended the three-week marathon all still on speaking terms, so that was good.

Then we got home and there was the new edition of Aquila magazine for Linnea and Astrid and I have a horrific cold and Rob brought laundry to the launderette after I sorted it into dark and light and DO NOT TUMBLEDRY.

Astrid walks now, like it's easy or something. And she climbs a lot more.

Emer is FIVE, you guys. FIVE.

I think my new filing cabinet arrives tomorrow, and then we will be organised and nothing will ever be untidy again ever, right?

Google+ still sucks and I am still not likely to get an account on it. Removing myself from Facebook was one of my best moves.

If you are ever on the worst ferry-crossing anyone can remember on a given route, with everyone being horribly sick all around, and you have to travel with children? I know the best five. Also, bring Rob, because he does a good line in nursing care and not getting sick himself.

And if you are ever on a train with a little smoke trouble, and you have to evacuate through the problem carriage and then on to the end of the train and down a ladder to the tracks, and you have to do it with five children? I know the five I'D choose. Also, bring Rob.

And then if you want to eat after both your two days of epic monster train travel? Bring Rob, because he (Rob, of the boil-everything-for-30-minutes-except-fishfingers cooking we loved so much in Wapping) can whip up a risotto apparently without fretting or fuss.

It was a great holiday. We're all exhausted beyond belief.

To do

Strip guest beds and launder bedding
Change kids' bedding
Change our sheet (cat-yuk duvet already changed after holiday)
Tidy dining room
Somehow persuade Rob that Astrid can't be left unsupervised (she just came upstairs to see me while he was in the loo; she crawled all the way up with a mouthful of cat food)

More things to do

Make appt to have L's tonsils looked at
Make appt for A's booster jabs
Make appt for L & me to have our hairs cut; she persuaded another child to trim her fringe over the holiday
Draw up daily routine list and stick it to the wall to tick off

Wannapaint

I have found a notebook I love, and I am beginning to paint in it, and to sketch out ideas for future paintings, and I'm hoping that all this will eventually lead to writing again, because I have basically stopped - Emer didn't even get a birthday poem this year, and nor did Astrid.

And I still have the calligraphy stuff to do, but I'm not even approaching the level I want to be at even to do the first drafts people have requested.