Alls well

Oh here, three weeks! That's quite bad isn't it?

Oh well. You know when everything is just going so well and you roll with it and enjoy life and let time get away from you. Well that's exactly what I've been doing lately, I make no apologies. Life has been great.

Chloe is loving school at the minute. We had her parent teacher meeting just before Halloween and apart from the fact that she sometimes rushes things and can be easily distracted the odd time her teacher is really pleased with her progress. There isn't a book she's brought home the past few months that she has trouble reading and she's excelling in maths. Her teacher likes to let the kids progress at their own speed and there are different stages in each topic but if the kids are ready to move past their current stage she lets them, so some are further along in reading, some in maths, some in writing. Logistically it must be a nightmare or the woman is a genius herself because I can't quite imagine keeping an eye on what 25 kids are doing when they're not all doing the same thing at the same time:)

Financially we've had some good news too. We are due to come out of our current mortgage offer on 1 December so I called my lender* to renegotiate, figuring that either I could get the same rate fixed for a few years or a small reduction. I didn't. Instead they more than halved the rate, effectively cutting my current mortgage payment in half as well and fixed it for two years for me. Now it's blue sky and plain sailing for a while with more spare cash maybe for a holiday (Robert's Chloe's desperate to go to Disneyland in Paris) and definitely for Chloe's trust fund so I can start to build that up again.

Plus we got a letter from the gas company to say we've overpaid this year by nearly £70. Roll on the warm toasty Christmas:)

My dad's all better, it's truly been an amazing thing to see. You really wouldn't believe to look at him that he had Cancer a few short months ago, or that he had major surgery to treat it. He actually counts it as a blessing now because a) he's much more aware of his own health and actively looking after himself and b) he was able to spend loads of time with Chloe while he was off work. My dad doesn't have kids of his own so he just loves the fact he has a grand daughter. The only problem was that he worked nights and would be tired during the day and Chloe being the handful that she is, this meant she spent more of her time with my mum when she was at their house.

The fact he's been able to spend so much time with her is brilliant, she gets it now that my dad is "the fun one", the one who will put her in the car and drive 30 miles just to show her a bit of tree trunk because it looks like a bum or he'll let her make shortbread and milkshakes and completely destroy the kitchen in the process because "otherwise the brush and mop were a waste of money".

He's back to work now on light duties, but he's realised that it's better to have more time than more money so he's sworn off the idea of overtime. Hopefully this means he'll have not only more time, but more energy for his family now.

And lastly to top off the good news, Robert's boss reminded him last week that he hasn't taken any holidays yet, he also reminded him of the company motto "It's Christmas, stuff the work". His boss wants to shut up shop while the kid's are off school for the holidays, he didn't need to ask Robert twice so now we'll all be home together for the holidays. I couldn't really ask for more to be honest.

*Progressive Building Society for anyone interested. They're absolutely brilliant to deal with and their customer service is second to none. I've never known a company to go so far out of their way to be helpful and most importantly they do this both when the times are good and when they're bad whereas most other banks seem happy to drop their customers like hot turds when the chips are down, Progressive have always been brilliant and got me out of a tight spot once or twice.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for updating us. I'm glad things are going so well for you on so many fronts.

    (Also, I WISH my company's motto for Christmas was like Robert's.)

    ReplyDelete

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