So, I have decided to start this blog over again. One of the reasons is I simply lost my back up after moving servers, but I also wanted a fresh start too. I do plan on adding different content and posts than before though so it all made sense to restart.

Well what a year it’s been! Just an update on my situation and what we as a family have done this past horrible year.

In January last year we decided to home educate our children, this is due to many reasons including some personal reasons that I wish to keep private for my children as it involves their needs. I researched a lot before making the decision and I will talk about this whole process we took in a dedicated post at some point. We deregistered them at the end of Jan 2020 when my eldest was in year 1 and my youngest in reception, both had learned to read and write in school so we had a good start set already. There is a huge amount of home education websites, resources and groups online and locally that we use, again I will talk about this more when I do a dedicated home school blog. So from then the kids were home full time and we started to do activities and learning along with play dates etc but then coronavirus hit!

I decided a few weeks before the official lockdown that we would lock ourselves in and isolate, this mainly due to the fact myself and my husband had pre existing medical conditions. I managed to get a regular shopping slot with Asda and had that weekly since March last year. We have not been out for shopping, exercise, activities apart from a few things, Gp appointments, house viewings and moving home.

We decided in June to put our home for sale in the middle of the pandemic! This was so scary to me as I was paranoid about getting the virus but we stayed outside during viewings and scrubbed the house from top to bottom once they left, anyway…

We sold the house in July and had to find a place for us, we had decided to move to North Wales after falling in love with it during the last few years and we had a general area in mind. The trouble was Wales was still in lock down till August so we couldn’t cross the border to view anything, when we did we could only view empty houses at first which for us was lucky as the house we ended up buying was empty and had been for a good few years.

It was a doer upper, a very old house built in 1804 and used as various housing and commercial businesses over the years. We have since found out it was built originally as a chapel. It’s a love big house one we couldn’t of afforded had it been in immaculate condition but we intend to improve it but by bit and get it to a dream home once again eventually. We moved house late October and needed to get a few urgent jobs done initially the electrics needed a rewire, roof needed repairing and there was a few damp places that needed attention. Also we needed a new kitchen as it was so old and disgusting I don’t think anything would of got it clean.

We had most of the urgent jobs done before Christmas and have still to have our kitchen finished most of it’s in and it’s functioning but the pandemic and lockdown out it all on hold again and we are waiting for our jabs before we get workmen in again now. But We had a lovely family Christmas again at home as we in Wales were in lockdown through the new year.

Unfortunately during the last few weeks my lovely father in law passed away and my family have been grieving, it wasn’t COVID related but COVID itself made it very hard for the entire family to be together which was so sad to see. My kids are very young still and don’t really understand that grandads gone now especially as they hadn’t seen him for so long due to the pandemic I suppose it doesn’t seem real. my husband continues to grieve and I am here to support him anyway I can right now.

The other not so great thing that happened during the last year is that out business couldn’t trade, we run a business that attended lots of festivals and large scale public events. Which obviously didn’t happen this year. We have been unable to trade at all and due to this have decided to try and start a new business, it’s new and small and I don’t want to pin all my hopes on it as it’s very fresh but hopefully it will grow into something good like our original businesses did. So we have had to tighten our belts and take it easy this year and try and save as much as we could not knowing how long this pandemic would go on for.

Luckily it looks like the end is in sight, I am officially in the shielding, clinically extremely vulnerable priority group but due to the move out of England into Wales I only had my jab last week so I have my 2nd at the beginning of July then hopefully life can start to resume to some normality. I know we aren’t gonna be able to to travel to Orlando this year which is a big disappointment as we were due to travel in 2020 but we are keeping out fingers crossed for 2022!

So that’s it my mad, bad, sad crazy year. We are keeping every crossed everyone stays safe and we as a family can keep safe and we will see everyone on the other side.

Thanks for reading, please give my social media account a follow and drop me a message in the comment form if you have any questions or anything for me.

Gina x