Posts Tagged ‘parents’

In April, my parents retired. Typically, you think of this as the period of your life when you have lots of free time. But that does not last long. Soon you have filled it up with so much stuff that you have no idea how you ever managed to fit a job in.

Which is why, two months later, we were still trying to find a weekend when we could all go out for a surprise trip to Fazenda to celebrate my dad’s birthday.

It had to a lunch time as they don’t allow children after 6 pm. That sucks because it is way better on an evening. However, the experience child-wise was kick ass. The high chair was already set out when we arrived and Venla got her own plastic plate, cutlery set and breaker. Hats off to them they have it down: and it’s free for under 5s!

Afterwards, we headed over to the Golf Bar and played some golf.

It’s a lot of fun. It does feel like real golf: the clubs feel a bit light but other than that you are really hitting a ball with real clubs. It’s £40 per hour which is a little steep, but not too bad when split between a group of you.

God bless parents.

Yeah, duck racing. It’s a thing.

We used Easter Sunday to visit my parents, who were holidaying in Pateley Bridge. The camp site was running a duck racing competition, so they had bought us a duck each. The concept is that they tip all the ducks in at the one end of the stream and the first to make it down to the next bridge is the winner.

It was so popular this year that they had to have six heats, with the top handful going through to the final. Sadly none of our ducks were fast enough to qualify. It’s a shame, as the grand prize was a respectable £50.

However, at least Elina can now say she has been to a real English duck race.

Recently, there has been quite a lot of discussion around the subject of adoption. People stand in horror that the adoption process is being sped up so that we can match children to adoptive parents in a quicker amount of time.

The phrase you hear most often is that “we need to make sure that perspective parents are suitable.”

But is that really true? I’m going to suggest not.

The reason is, we don’t actually need adoptive parents to be that suitable. Of course if they are brilliant perspective parents then that is fantastic news, but I think we need to take a more pragmatic approach to the whole situation.

After all, these are kids who are usually in care homes. So the question isn’t are we placing them with suitable people, it’s whether we are placing them we a couple who would be at minimum more suitable than living in a care home.

We know that a care home isn’t a good environment to bring a child up in, we’ve done the research and statically it doesn’t end as well. So the question then becomes, what exactly would be the harm in having a more relaxed attitude to adoption?

Recently, I headed over to the West Yorkshire Playhouse, where my sister currently works, to have dinner with my parents and one of my grandmothers.

They have a restaurant in there, though they don’t offer table service, it’s more of a cafe slash restaurant, and to be fair to them, that is what they sell it as. The food was, however, rather disappointing. It was well cooked but it wasn’t very warm, probably a result of the excessively long wait in line to be served.

I could have understood this slightly more if they were busy, but with accelerated dining experience being my area it was obvious what they were doing wrong and how with a few simple changes they could quickly clear such problems up.

On Thursday, I met Elina’s mum.

She and her boyfriend are currently over in Leeds visting Elina and with it being her birthday, we decided to go out to dinner. We ended up at Las Iguanas because I presumed Elina was joking when she told me to sort out a restaurant, which was apparently a silly mistake lol.

It was always going to be an interesting evening as I don’t speak any Finnish and Riitta doesn’t speak any English, and as you all know, Elina isn’t the most chatty person ever 😀 . Still, a bottle of rioja later and things were fine.

We also found some common ground on our love of vodka and Riitta’s boyfriend told me about his career as a ship designer. So all in all, an enjoyable dinner and only slightly more awkward than introducing Elina to my parents.

Went over to my parents for dinner on Monday and somehow got ambushed into sorting through a lot of my old stuff.

So, so many trees worth of paper thrown away. Including my prize collection of empty refill pads which I built up over the years. Not to mention and endless series of course notes from a-levels, books, magazines, comics and a whole heap of other junk.

I also found a few of my early writings including the self explanatorily titled A Stern Letter from Richard Nixon. I vaguely remember writing it though I didn’t dare read it – doing so could only reduce the treasured place such a work has in history.

Things are finally getting sorted in my apartment.

Had the parents over on Wednesday to give their seal of approval. They seem to be happy enough though didn’t as we were all hoping bring a three piece suite as a house warming gift. Still, probably too much to hope for in terms of what could have been produced from a carrier bag.

Also the contractors have finally been out to the house so I finally have keys to my balcony so if I decide to take up smoking I’m sorted. It should also be great for house parties and hopefully I can get some kind of table and chairs sorted for out there for the odd spots of sunshine we will hopefully experience this year.

Headed home on Wednesday night and decided to swing by my parents to pick up some mail. I ended up staying for dinner as our Canadian visitors, Diane & Nick had been preparing a huge stew so we ended up with a dozen or so of us crammed round the dining room table enjoying a rather nice meal.

I say crammed, my parents being quite so middle class have quite a large dining room table so it wasn’t that cramped lol. I really should make an effort to go home to the parents for dinner every so often though – it’s the only time I get fresh vegetables 😀 .

In search of a good meal I headed back home yesterday as I also needed my dad to fix my car 😀 . Thankfully both services were provided so my car is once again oiled up and I’ve had a proper meal (as much as I love my sandwich dinners on the go) so it was well worth the trip.

It is certainly a sign I am getting old though, we ended up clearing out a lot of my old crap that I still have stored at home and there is so much stuff that I had as a child, all on it’s way to charity shops or landfill sites. Thought provoking times.