The Farewells Have Begun

...and so have the tears.

I'm not very good at goodbyes, a bit too emotional you see, especially when I think about not seeing all my nearest and dearest for a long time.

In the past few days I've had a 'farewell dinner' with my ante-natal girlfriends. Yup the 7 of us all got down to some real heavy breathing techniques together about 4 years ago, laughed while we watched the Dad's 'bathe' a doll and 'change' it's nappy! They're probably not much better at it now! But, the best part has been the friendships that have evolved between us as we all went through the shock, horror and bliss of having our children...hmmm I think maybe we're all still going through shock, horror and bliss!

The weekend was spent with another lovely friend who came to stay with her eldest daughter (who is great friend of DD). She and her family moved back to Ireland in January and we all miss them, so it was especially lovely that they made the trip back to Blighty to see us before we leave for Chennai. We met up with some more friends at Hatton http://www.hattonworld.com/ where the kids ran around and had a ball, were half eaten by chickens (no word of a lie - they are MEAN beasts) and it hardly rained at all - honest, hard to beleive, we were all in shock too. In the evening the Mum's got a well deserved night off, had a curry and finished the evening with cocktails at The Kenilworth. https://www.thekenilworth.co.uk/pages/cocktaillounge.htm

The tears came at 'dropping off time' at the airport on Sunday and continued again in the car on the way home as DD informed me she was feeling really sad and was missing her friend...the Big Flip Flop spat that occurred in the morning had obviously been forgotten!

Today I visited my lovely Godmother who, having spent all her 80ish years in Coventry is also moving away to Ipswich in the next few weeks, we were both feeling quite emotional I think...big changes afoot for all of us, and probably even more so for her. Her new house looks lovely and I really hope she will be very very happy there, especially as she will now live close to her son and his wife.

Only 5 more weeks of farewells to go...