Spring is here!

Our first batch of ducklings were hatched on Sunday morning so Spring is definitely here!

Now, to carry on from my last posting - sounds morbid but please plan your funerals and make sure everybody knows what you want them to do with you once you are gone! Cremated, buried? Hymns to be sung, readings to be read? It would really help if we all had a funeral plan as well as a will! having said which I have not done one yet either!

Well, the funeral was 10 days after Mums death, Johan and the kids arrived late on Saturday and the funeral was the following Monday. Funerals in England are a lot more solemn and serious than they are here. Curtains are closed for the entire morning until the hearse arrives and parks outside the house so that the neighbours can show their respect - their curtains are sometimes closed too. As the funeral cortege moves to the church people bow their heads as you pass and old men doff their cap - it all makes it very very sad and respectful. At the church the family were instructed to walk in behind the coffin - that set me off, I cried and sobbed the whole way through thinking of my little mum in that box - it was horrible. David gave a short speech about how we loved out mum and then we went outside to view the flowers. Both mum and dad had had their ashes scattered at Walton Lea which has beautiful gardens.

After the funeral we all went to have tea at the church hall in Great Budworth - Mum used to liove there when she was a child. Well, the caterers did us proud - there was so much food and it was so good it was amazing! The only potential problem was the cousins that hate each others guts (they are sisters) - however they each sat at a different end of the hall and behaved themselves and I made a point of sitting for a while with each. BUT little did I know that Johan and the kids spent more time with one than the other and I was taken to task about this in later days!

After that, it was a matter of putting the house on the market, selling the furniture, packing the clothes in bags for Oxfam etc. In between times we had day trips with the kids - Alton Towers theme park, Artley Hall Spring festival, Blackpool etc so we tried to make it as holidayish as possible - plus we had lots of people to see.

A very special occassion for me was going out to lunch with 3 of Mums friends, they had been friends since they were about 17 and they are all active bright ladies and I got on so well with them - it really brought home to me how horrible and debilitating diabetes is, if it wasn't for that my mum would have had such a better quality of life!