We’ve had a difficult couple of weeks since coming back from our stay at beautiful Blairmore Farm. As soon as we came home, we were straight back down to earth with a bang. My granddad had been very ill in hospital and we knew he didn’t have long left, and he very sadly passed away just a few days after we arrived home.

A couple of days after that, my husband went into hospital for the third operation since his accident. We are sincerely hoping that this time it will work, and he will soon be slowly but surely on the mend, having made no progress since it happened back in September.

In the meantime though, he has been totally out of action for a couple of weeks – in a lot of pain and unable to drive or get about very well. Things have also been really busy here, and my husband’s prerogative has meant that everything has fallen to me.

Monday was a whole new low for me. We went to my granddad’s funeral in the afternoon, then I started the running around to get Libby to her drama class on time, followed by calling in briefly at home for the children to eat dinner, then back out to a meeting about Libby’s school. I wasn’t able to go to the meeting because I just couldn’t face asking for help with the children yet again, so I drove my husband to the meeting, dropped him off and hung around for an hour with the girls.

By the time we’d got home and put the girls to bed, it was gone 10 pm when I walked the dogs and grabbed something to eat. I couldn’t face the work I’d intended to do that day, and thinking the deadline was Wednesday, I put it off until Tuesday. It wasn’t until Tuesday that I realised the work had been expected on Monday, and I’d missed the deadline.

This meant a stressful day on Tuesday, trying to get everything done in time – as well as running Libby backwards and forwards to her school visit. After months and months of struggling every day, I felt that I’d finally caved and failed to do even the bare minimum to keep up with the demands of home and work.

By Wednesday night, I was ready to get out for a run on the hills with the dog. By chance, I ended up running with local musician Sam Eden. And here’s a tip from the top – check out his tunes if you’re interested in the future of music. But never try to keep up with him when running uphill.

Today, my husband has finally had the stitches taken out after his operation, so he can now drive again. I’m really hoping that this means things are going to get easier from here on in. I’ve definitely reached a point where things can only get better.

Luckily, the girls are still as happy as ever. Libby absolutely adores her new school, and can’t wait to start. Lia has had a lovely afternoon at the park today whilst we were waiting to pick my husband up from hospital, and next week my sister has very kindly agreed to house and dog-sit for us, so we’re heading to Bluestone for a week. We couldn’t be more delighted.

This week’s Thursday photo #111 is from Sunday. After Libby’s birthday party, we headed to a little local music festival. It was – in traditional festival style – raining. A lot. But none of us were particularly worried about that, and in the end we spent most of our time sitting in the acoustic tent, where we were nice and dry and the girls had a lovely time dancing along to the music. I took this photo on the way home. They were tired and wet but happy nonetheless.