Still alive but very busy with Dad and doing not very much!  Where does bloody time go?  But all is well, more or less!

We are out of the contract to buy the house.  Not 100% sure that it was the right thing to do but we did not exactly love the house and were fed up with the messing around.  Bottom line is that it did not 'feel' right for Anne anymore and we always said that we both had to want to buy somewhere.

We did look at a house in Pennington Tuesday morning, which was lovely in many ways. albeit a wee bit small.  I thought, on leaving to go to the Amish country, that we might actually put a bid in.  But, in my absence, Anne took against it.  Bit too small.  But, above all,  she thinks that it would be beneficial for Joey, in particular, to stay here for longer.  Why?  because most of the kids in the Cambridge school have 'issues' (it is a specialist school!) and Joey, whilst friendly with quite a few, has yet to make any real friends.  On the other hand, we have Chris and Jack living here.  Neither have any learning difficulty or social behaviour issues but both are lovely kids.  We think that Joey has learned a good deal just from playing with them and it would do him good to keep doing so for a while.

So here we stay.  Anne called up the landlady last night and, in principle, she is happy for us to extend the lease.

Back from a couple of days in Amish country, Lancaster County Pa, with my Dad.  V interesting.  Visited the Strasburg Railroad museum (surprisingly interesting  and v well done), an Amish 'village, watched an Amish farmer harvest corn using a team of 8 beautiful, Belgian draught horses, had a nice meal, visited several covered bridges and generally drove around enjoying the beautiful countryside.

Trying for once to write after a few glasses of wine.  Find it v hard to type.  How did the likes of Dylan Thomas manage!

Anyway, Izzy gave us a lunch request this evening.  Jam sandwiches, broccoli and chorizzo.  Nice mixture,

Dad read to Joey this evening.  Joey pretended to sleep and my Dad blew gently in his ears, which resulted in lots of giggles.  Dad is  good with joey - much better than you might expect, given his generation and army, strict discipline background.  But as somebody who has suffered from depression, I do think that he understands better than most how the mind can sometimes screw you up and make you behave in a certain way.  Fair play to him.

Daniel, the one that got away, the little boy that we thought would be our adopted son before we learned that he had been stolen,  will be 7 yrs old soon. We haven't seen him for over 3 years because of the problems with Isabela's adoption.  He still calls Anne mum - Mai Anne.

Izzie got a wee bit hurt on the trampoline today.  her response? 'I am hurt!  I want a cookie!'

Anne bought a gluten and dairy free cake today (yes, that is possible).  Joey saw it.

'Is that a cake?"

"Yes."

'Can I eat it?  Even with my diet?'
"Yes."
"So I don't need to get mad?"
"No, son, you don't".

As for Izzie, she was literally jumping for joy at the though tof eating a cake!

Houses; so we decide not to buy the neighbours house and go for 39 Main St, Pennington.  And told the lawyer and realtor.  So realtor comes back saying that 39 Main is under contract.  So that is out.  And then lawyer comes back to say that seller might not allow us out of contract.  So we might be forced to buy neighbours house after all!

Bit of a mess.  But we need to keep it in perspective.  The reasons why we wanted the neighbours house remain valid.  We will have a roof over our head.  Life goes on.  We will learn more tomorrow.

Dad and I took Izzy horse riding.  She rides up at the Mcgarrans' farm on the other side of the Sourlands, on a 26yr old pony called Sugarfoot.  The lovely Chelsie is the instructor.