Last Tuesday (ok so I guess it was 2 Tuesdays ago now at time of posting!) was the birth of a new SSA Activity that we (Col and I) are both attending. It’s a new monthly dinner group that is going to get together at different restaurants, chat and hang out. This month we went to BJ’s, a brew-house not too far from where we live. Our number was few, but we still had a really good night’s craic with our friends.

Wednesday, I stopped by Crystal’s house as she needed a little help with her little girl Faith for a few minutes, had a cuppa (and an orange club biscuit – which, as pathetic as it sounds, completely made my day!!). I went to get my eyebrows done, posted a parcel, dandered around Barnes and Noble (waiting for something to catch my eye so I could spend my gift card) before going over to Magz’s house for lunch. After lunch (she’s intent on turning me in to a lettuce leaf!), we drove back to Sugar Land, where we met up with Crystal (accompanied by an asleep faith and some still-warm home made bread – yummmmmmm!) for a walk around the park.

Yes, you read that right, I went walking – eek! I finished the day off by making a cottage pie for dinner and clipping/organising coupons for my grocery shop that week before Col came home.  Friday held nothing much worth mentioning, Saturday I cleaned, Col and I enjoyed a nice Starbucks round the corner, with our books in the sunshine (while it’s still ‘cool’ enough to do so) before we undertook an evening of babysitting.

We’ve offered to babysit for my friend Julie and her hubby Sherif for a while now and she finally took us up on our offer leaving baby Hazel and her big brother Zane over for a few hours while they had dinner and a movie. As well as those two, we watched Michael Stevenson while his parents went out to celebrate a late Valentines day.

What a fun and stressful evening all at the same time! lol! By the time our friends came to collect their babies, we were both knackered and all plans to cook dinner had gone completely out the window.  Col suggested, after hearing that a bunch of our friends had eaten out that night, that we go take in a steak at Outback.  It’s been so long since we went to Outback that I jumped at the chance – yum! Although they got Col’s order wrong and brought him a rack of Lamb instead of a rack of ribs – but it was delicious all the same (even if my both of our meats were under-cooked!).

Sunday morning we played Monopoly (yeah, we’ve re-ignited our boardgame-love!) before we headed out to George Bush park for a picnic with the Maddens and the pups.

It was good fun, the weather was perfect for such an outing – not too hot, a light breeze and the place was so huge that the dogs could play catch with uncle Col and not bother a soul.

After the picnic, it was off to the Maddens for more Ligretto (yes, we are somewhat obsessed!) before we headed home and had a yummy roast pork dinner!

Monday we woke to news of a flood in our apartment in Larne. The plumbing hasn’t been fantastic since the day we bought the place, in fact, this is the third time something’s gone wrong with it and once before we’ve had the exact same thing go wrong. I can’t say this week has been fun, in fact, it’s been the complete opposite of fun.

It’s been shit.

Being 5,000 miles away from your property and 6 hours behind everyone and each step in the happenings, makes getting things taken care of very difficult.

We’re very lucky that my sister and her boyfriend were in the apartment – or God knows what could have transpired.

It was such a crappy week that I even cancelled the ‘Be Creative’ group last Thursday.  I just moped, Col moped and we totally shut down.  Thankfully we got most things resolved (as a result of 3.30am wake ups to call people at home), we got a new door, we got the plumbing fixed using residential and commercial water jetting services and water turned back on and for now, the insurance company are taking care of the damaged properties.