It's been a while...

Well, here we are for a major update. It has been a long time since I last did one and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge.

Ellie has of course been growing up fast. Her latest exploit, today in fact, was to stand up on her own, using the coffee table as support, and then to start clapping her hands, hence balancing on her own. She’s so much happier to be able to get around a bit more now that she can crawl and sit and roll. The last few weeks have been a bit frustrating for us all with Ellie’s whining and moaning because she couldn’t get anywhere but wanted to explore. Her swimming classes have been getting better with more and more adventure and underwater action occurring. I’ll try and upload some videos that I took on my phone of the instructor chucking her in to the pool.

The house has come along quite a bit over the summer. There are still some gaping holes (quite literally) in the infrastructure but we are making progress with getting them sorted. Highlights include the christening of the shed that didn’t have the best start in life due to high winds when being built. I got a call from our ‘neighbour to be’ whilst on the M5 to say that the shed was trying to attack his tractor.

To cut a long story short I managed to get her back into shape and am now the proud owner of a solar powered lighting shed, 4m x 3m.

The loft is getting some insulation soon too. I went for a deal from B&Q, £200 all in regardless of size of house. We already six insulation rolls in the loft, left over from building the house and stud walls, but seeing as the main insulation job is being done for a fixed price they were better off with the other neighbour than in our loft so we sold them for £50.

We’ve steadily been crossing jobs off the list on the fridge but there are plenty more to do still. Sam’s latest was to sand down and oil the wooden worktop. My latest was to add the last of the door stops and make a wooden threshold between the kitchen and the dining room.

We commissioned our driveway having decided we’ll have enough money in a month or so. I had a largeish sale at work and should get enough commission to pay for the work. Again, our neighbour will doing the work which involves chopping down some hedge and removing stumps, levelling and making a nice rounded driveway area, creating two land drains and gulleys, making a soakaway, destroying the shed, moving a load of top soil and finally adding 48 tonnes of MOT to the driveway to make it nice and smooth. We can’t wait for this to be done as getting from the parked cars to the house is a major drama right now. We currently have to negotiate rubble, breeze blocks, bricks and mud. Not good with a pregnant wife and a young child!!

Work for me has been hard recently but a flurry of activity has seen a few hundred grands worth of sales and the same expected before Christmas. The credit crunch is biting but life goes on for some industries so I’ll focus on those and hope to ride out the tougher times. Here’s hoping I hit target and can hold my head high at work.

Well, there’s plenty more to say but it can’t all be said at once. Perhaps I’ll try and update more regularly and cover some other subjects. That said, this is a Cantlop Grove and Ellie blog and I’ve said quite a bit on those subjects.