Head, shoulders, knees and toes.....

.....and lots of filling my belly :-)
Our usual Wednesday with most of the crowd at the pub for a meal. Friday for Hubby's birthday we went out to lunch with Daughter, M and the children. Continued celebrating on Saturday night with another pub meal with Son and Fiancée (Son paid which was even better). And last night was a thank you dinner for FriendA and Hubby for the DIY repairs they had done at the vicarage. The Vicar and his wife are a lovely warm friendly couple and she is a good cook too, so FriendP and I were very pleased to be included as a thank you to us for loaning out our husbands hahaha.

There's been a lot of medical stuff recently. I had an MRI scan last Tuesday to see if there are any inner ear problems causing the tinnitus, results in about two weeks. Last kidney function blood test showed a drop so I'm waiting for the referral to the hospital renal unit, hopefully just a medication tweek. I rebooked the mammogram (cancelled the automatic appointment that came through last October because of my op) for 26th February. My knees have actually been quite a bit better since I've cut out (almost) dairy foods which is a blessing as now I've got an ingrowing toenail painful enough to force me to the chiropodist,  and it needs the surgical fix I had done on my left foot four years ago, and he's booked me in for the 25th so I'll be very grateful if it's dry the next day when I'm hobbling to my mammogram in open toe sandals hahaha

There's been a bit of crafting with my new found crochet skills. I've made cuffs for some boots so they will come up higher to help jeans stay inside.

I haven't worked out exactly how to sew them in securely yet, but there's no rush as my poorly toe won't actually allow me to wear them yet.

Thankfully we haven't been affected here by the dreadful flooding or the storms, it has just meant horrid weather so we stay home more. The very high winds have closed our bypass bridge a few times and that leads to total gridlocked chaos through the whole town but as we're retired we can avoid most of that too yippee.

The really bright sunny day yesterday did get us out of the house though. Daughter text to say she'd found a route from her house to ours that passed seven geocache (is that singular and plural or should it be geocaches?). So she came to collect Hubby and I to have a cup of tea at her's while she fought with all four children to actually get them off computers, washed, dressed and out of the house..."there are no socks anywhere!...why can't I wear crocks on a muddy walk.....if you carry your laptops there's no moaning that they're heavy.....I need a new toothbrush, the cat has licked mine!.....I can't remember if I've had breakfast or not ".

Eventually we did get out and apart from the children all taking it in turns to get grumpy or run off it was a lovely walk and four out of seven cache were found.

Arrived at my house and Hubby drove Daughter home to collect her car along with laptops a french stick and some bacon and we all sat down for a very late lunch. Then they all had some much missed screen time (only been off them about 2 hours but they were desperate lol).

Don't think there is much actually planned for this week so plenty of scope to do lots or nothing at all.
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Time to leave the cave.....

Just like the snowdrops and other spring flowers that are popping up ready to flower, so it feels like people are getting ready to stretch after the winter hibernation and think about meeting up, activities to do and holidays for the months ahead.

We went out with friendsL&K Saturday night and the main topic of conversation was choosing what excursions to book on the April cruise we are doing together.

Sunday friendN rang. They are heading off in their camper van to spend quite a few weeks in the south of France, but as we had mentioned holidaying together in the summer she thought we should synchronise some dates before we both get booked up and can't. Actually she wasn't wrong as even now there were not many opportunities to pencil in much more than a week! So early June we are both saving the same ten days and we'll decide what to do with them nearer the time.

Monday was a very well attended coffee morning of 17 adults and one toddler (with the grandparent on childcare duty). That is the most we've had and the dinning room was a bit noisy and squashed but it was really lovely. There was J who hadn't been up before but she retired at Christmas so hopefully will now be a regular and V who actually moved out of the Close towards the end of last year and he came back to see us all. Someone suggested we ring a bell every half hour to all change seats so we get to all talk to each other, but honestly it would have resembled a game of twister if we'd tried to move around each other with that many chairs squished together hahaha.

Been invited out to lunch with FriendsN&T and FriendsN&N. We all go back to being friends and neighbours when we lived in the same village more than 35 years ago, and now we see each other rarely so it's special when we do....so that's tomorrow.

Tonight (as my usual Wednesday night crowd are not meeting up because two are on holiday, FriendHM and I are going out and can enjoy a proper one-to-one catch up for a change.

And because I noticed that April, May and June are already quite full in my diary I thought I should email FriendHG as we always try to fit in three sleepovers a year but if we don't do the first one sometime in March it will be mid-summer!

Talking of mid-summer, SisterS wanted us to holiday with them again in August but haven't heard from her about it yet, so I'd better check if they still want to.
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