A glorious morning...

Well, actually, it started out like any other morning with the usual chaos of getting four kids up and ready for school!! Cam is ill so he is home and Mae had a dentist appointment so that had to be dealt with first. Then came the glorious part...a half hour ride out on a pony in the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside...bliss! I really needed to calm my soul after all the moving turmoil and this was just the tonic I needed...thank you Jo-Jo for suggesting I book in for a ride, great idea!! I went out on one of the morning "ladies" rides and met a lovely group of women and we were lead by our fearless leader Fizz and Jo-Jo tagging along as well. My gorgeous boy "Max" was kind to me and my legs don't feel as wobbly as I expected after four months or so OUT of the saddle. Tomorrow I may be eating these words, hehe. :o) I managed a few trots and even decided to go for it on two canters, the first definitely not very elegant, hahaha! I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else today and feel so much better for it.

Now back to reality and our house sale STILL being in limbo. A young couple had "repaired" the sale "chain" last week but they decided to pull out yesterday. Fabulous. Another buyer has come in to take their place but of course the spineless estate agents won't give anybody any type of guarantee on time frames for exchanging contracts. No contract, no sale. Welcome to my life since the 12th of JANUARY. The system here is doing my head in. Your house is sold, but not really. For f&%ks sake. I'm getting near the end of my patience. Yesterday my boys should have left the country with Grandpa and the rest of us should have been joining them on Sunday. I'm just so bloody frustrated with all of this. The only good thing is that I am DONE with my estate agents next week and I've been investigating some of the "for sale by owner" websites and will give them a go before we even think of another agent. There are no guarantees no matter what we do. What a messed up system this is. Blah.

Okay, enough of that before I lose my calm mood from my mornings activity!! My kids are good, Tim is here this week, I have lots of friends lifting up my mood and I have a roof over my head...STILL...LOL I know things could be worse so I'm trying to stay positive.

I've had a glimpse into the "Aspie World", as I call it, last week. As hard as it is to believe, we can often momentarily forget that Connor is autistic. When things are going well and he is calm and happy, he is just like any other kid. He is so chilled out at the moment and it's lovely to see. It's little things that he does/says/thinks that remind us of how different things can be in his world. Last Friday, as we are trying to rush him out the door to school, he announced to me that he had cleaned out his, normally bulging, pencil case and had left "an assortment of pens shaped like starships" on the table for me. Huh?? After he left, this is what I found on my dining room table---------->

To you and me these are just pens, caps, pencils, highlighters, erasers, compasses, etc. and to Connor these are a great opportunity to make "starships". Fantastic!! I think this world must be a great one to live in and maybe we could all benefit from a visit from time to time. I had another small glimpse into how things can become very unsettling for Aspies at Connor's youth group last week. A boy who had been dropped off suddenly came bolting our of the building and headed up to the road obviously distressed. Connor and I stayed with him and tried to convince him to come back inside and I was obviously worried about him being too close to the road. Thankfully his Mom had just turned her car around an came along a moment later and we flagged her down and she was able to calm him. It turns out his "subs" money for the group had fallen out of his pocket in the car and he was completely distressed about this to the point of being in tears. Seems amazing that something that wouldn't faze the average person, maybe just annoy us that we'd lost the £1, can completely distress an Aspie. I only brought this up because I received a lovely handwritten thank you note in the mail from this boy's Mom for our efforts to calm him and our willingness to stay to make sure he was okay. The two boys have become great pals and we now have an invitation for a "play date" over the Easter school holidays, how wonderful.

Well, I've blathered on enough for now, must get on with the rest of the day. Delsin needs to be picked up then it's off to collect Connor from his school. More dentist appointments for me and the boys and Mae is off to the stables for her weekly riding lesson. Never a dull moment.

Hope you have a glorious moment of your own today!

Laura :o)