In with the new!! January 2017

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

5am start to get home New Years day, we flew into Faro to sun and warmth which was very much appreciated and continuing warm weather meant a few very enjoyable days out, a perfect time of year to investigate the coastlines stunning cliffs and beaches.

Looking so grown up.

Fancy this place Sarah Ball?

Eyes of the sea.

Algarvian coast.

Daydreaming.

Fairy theatre.

We had the first picnic of the year on the beach with the Emery family, lovey company, great place and tasty cake - thanks Sarah :) 

All wrapped up on the beach.

Avo Maria our lovely neighbour.

Avo Maria gave the boys their Christmas presents of hand knitted scarves, they were very happy to have something from her. 

We now have the design of our house and the floor plans all finalised which you will see once the plans have been approved. Eeek!! This is only part of our view... :)

A section of the view from which will be our bedrooms and lounge.

Nice gates.

Drive through gates refitted and the home made walk through one all in place.

Quick hide!

Found a snake!










The earthing rods (three of them) took a bit of sinking at 1.5m long and meant yet more digging to Neils delight, electricity company out, road up and mains cables in, just need to be connected now. 

Mini digger at work.

Rod or The Lightening Thief?!

I would say the new year got off to a very positive start and the icing on the cake was that we found a new home, a house for half the rent of the apartment, this was very welcome as we had been cold in the apartment, situated on the north side of the block meant no warmth from the sun at all, we had a couple of electric heaters but they really didn’t make much difference, the electric blanket did though but I was in bed more than out of it which isn’t good for the back. Its closer to the land which will make things a lot easier, with sunny rooms and outdoors is outside the door. 

Brown!!

Much nicer tiles!

It needed some work as it had not been rented since 2009 and the owners were happy for us to do what we felt was necessary. With six rooms, three of them south facing we should be warmer for what is left of the Winter months, the other huge bonus is that Pee Pee gets his freedom back. One possible drawback; the electricity had been disconnected years ago so we were eager to find out if it could be reconnected without moving the meter outside which is the current requirement and we did not know if there would be a fee, the owners made it clear that they did not need to rent it so if it was going to cost them anything there was every chance they would just not bother, fortunately the electric was turned on and we had the keys pretty much straight away. 

Kitchen.

Likely to be a bedroom.

Lounge.

Covered area out the back.

With over a week to move we had the luxury of a more relaxed relocation, we painted and reorganised the furniture that was there to suit our needs and with the help of Sarah had a good clean up. Shopping for appliances was nice, as most people know this happens rarely, we quickly picked a fridge freezer and washing machine to be delivered in a few days, next stage was getting our own things finally out of the container. 

All good, then a couple of days before we were to leave the apartment the fuses started to blow, we could not get them to stay on despite a systematical check of every appliance and light in the house, to be honest looking at the wiring we began to wonder if we could get it resolved, all surface fixed with lights connected with socket etc... Crap! Crap! Crap!  
Anyway, after a second lengthy process of elimination and a lot of brain steam Neil found the offending cable which was an outside one, once it was disconnected all was well. Phew!!

Washing machine = check. Fridge freezer = check. Beds = check. It felt good to know that we had a place that was comfortable and convenient and we were looking forward to moving in on February 1^st.  

Pee Pee, although he is a little nervous, loves taking a walk around the roof when we put the washing out, not sure if he appreciated the view as we do though, this is as much as he gets of the outside world poor love, but that will soon change. Wink wink, purr purr.

The Astra had its MOT, this was quite a painless experience, the MOT centre was as clean as a new pin and full of professional, efficient, and helpful staff, in one end and out the other with a pass or fail, we failed but nothing too serious especially considering the car is 18 years old. One good thing about this set up is that you cant be ripped off, the test centre is just that so no vested interest, a few days later we were back getting the retest and a certificate. 

I smashed the screen on my phone; gutted!! I am not keen on spending a lot of money on such things and my Samsung Note 3 was second hand and very much a bargain, so when I dropped it and the result was a broken LCD screen, I really did feel sick to find out that a replacement at 180 euro was actually more than I paid for it. It took me a while to get over this. Thanks to youtube we ordered one from China and Neil fitted it for half the price, thank you Neil!!

Well, things are plodding along so they say, which is just fine. 2017 is going to be very busy with lots of learning, much organising, masses of creating and plenty of willing volunteers!!

A sunny and warm December...

Praia da Rocha.

The last month of the year was soon upon us, and we were going to be in the UK as usual for Christmas time but I have to say staying in a warm climate was very tempting.


Neil was hoping to get the trenches and all of the other work he had to do finished before we left so that the electric could be connected at the land, it seemed that this was going to be difficult and the trenches were not straight forward due to a huge rock, after weeks of digging by Neil (I only manged to strike a blow once or twice), building and re modelling structures to house meters/fuse boards he could not get the gates moves in time so unfortunately he had that to look forward to on our return, he was a little disappointed to say the least but in all fairness he had worked his socks off. The bonus to being at the land is the sun, its warm up there compared to the apartment that is always cold, its so bad we look forward to hanging the washing out on the roof soaking up the sun, Pee Pee likes it up there too, lets face it his life is very limited for now. Neil has also become very fond of the sheep that visit every day; they chat...

The Grafter!!

Electric installation boxes.

For the fuse board.

Not much progress with the house design as we needed to check a couple of things with the planning office, one thing that we are finding tricky here is the timeline and the longer we take over preparing the plans the longer it will take to get them submitted for approval, time is of the essence but its equally important that we are happy with our home. Fingers crossed we can get cracking January…

The boys work.

After 10 years in Bulgaria we are not used to a warm Christmas, the boys put up the tree again and it was lovey all their own work, I was not really ‘feeling’ it, the apartment feels ‘detached’ in a way so I was happy to let them enjoy doing it. The towns festive lights were all up, it was really pretty, they put red carpets out along the cobbled streets to give a more festive feel, the shops had all done pretty Winter window displays but not much happens, there are people still around but I mean in the way of festivities, nothing festive at all as far as I could work out.

Nicely done!

Ricardos (front right) party.

We had our first invitation to a Portuguese birthday party, it was the lovely Ricardo who had helped us with the boys school registration.  It was a house party with wonderful food, singing and dancing. The boys made themselves quite at home clearly feeling comfortable in the family environment, Ryan ate pretty much all of the grilled fish and had a good suck on some small crabs, he really is a fan of sea delights, the rest of us tucked into the rice and beans. 

Max with our two, how handsome?!

Milka, Julian and Max are Bulgarian and very close friends with Ricardo, Milka prepared a lot of the food and it was great that we could chat away in Bulgarian as our Portuguese is not at such a level just yet to get us through a social evening. Neil had a few glasses of wine and moved on to some shots of stronger stuff before we headed home, Ricardo Neto is a wonderful and kind person and a wonderful singer and it was an honour to celebrate his birthday with him and his nearest and dearest.




December also bought Neils birthday so we went Karting, needless to say Neil won, Matty took out a pile of tyres while Ryan and I tootled round in quite an uneventful manner… It was a lovely family celebration!! Neils gift was shares in the electric car company Sondor, lets hope they prove to be a worthy investment. The afternoon took Neil and the boys over to the park with the remote control cars which Neil always enjoys very much as long as they don’t finish up arguing over who crashed it and smashed it. That was pretty much it, without child minders evenings out are off the agenda so no relaxing meal out and/or crazy party this year. 

Happy Birthday Dad!!

Waiting to go...

Santa doing his rounds in Shirley.

We were soon on our way to Mom and Dads for Christmas, it was heavenly not having a three hour drive to the airport, the two hours before the three hour flight and then another two hours at the other end not to mention the time waiting around, all in all we were door to door in less than seven hours which was joyous, very unlike what usually became a 12 hour journey that was made so often from Bulgaria.

First stop the chippy! Then Santa came down the street giving out sweets much to the boys delight. 

Cadbury's tree.

Our treat day out from Mom and Dad this year was Cadbury world, what could be better, free chocolate, we’ve been a couple of times before and have been impressed, it was a lovely day overall, the 5D experience was excellent!

Cadbury's street.

We had a lot of shopping to do and only a week to do it in, the internet would have been ideal here if only we had started a week ago, I ordered Neil a Japanese trowel (from Japan no less) and was astonished to say the least when it arrived in three days, we had decided to wrap some of the gifts in newspaper this year so the newspaper that the trowel came is was ideal and much better (as we could not read it) than the local papers which were full of death and violence which made the wrapping a bit tricky, we did however manage to find some Christmassy advertising that worked quite well.

Newspaper wrapping.

Our stay was just over two weeks returning home on New Years day, this was about a week shorter than normal so it meant we had cram things in a little.

Jules and me after a few.

Julie (from my boxing days many moons ago at Warley Gym) and I met in Brum and had the usual catch up over a pint or 10  and food in Weatherspoon’s, I really wanted to eat, drink and be merry at the German market but as there had been reports of food poisoning Jules said no, so cheap and cheerful won and to be fair with a difference of what was almost £4 a pint it was the better option. We as always, talked about anything and everything, great day!!

Christmassy Brum; the good old Rotunda

Catching up with Pete.

Had a lovely time in Warwick with the wonderful Peter, so nice to see a friend from Bulgaria, he is now living in Ibiza and with a bit of luck we will get more opportunities to meet up.










We caught up with almost all of Neils friends thanks to Darren who organised a meal out, it was great to see one and all so happy and content and everyone was excited to hear about Portugal. As usual it was hard to speak to everyone and with quite large gaps of time between seeing many of his friends sometimes its hard to know where to start, the journey from Bulgaria to Portugal was probably the most enjoyed topic. It wasn’t a late night as most have kids and any parent will tell you a enjoyable meal and home to bed by 10 is never a bad thing, gone are the days of clubbing in Solihull till the early hours…


Christmas came very quickly and the boys loved their Kindles and were happy to do ‘tasks’ for more time on it, this is part of the parental control we installed which works a treat, Ryan prepared carrots and Matty set the table and the centre piece was his very own creation that had airport security baffled on the way out much to my annoyance as they took ages pondering what it could be and finally unwrapped the very carefully wrapped CANDLE!!!! 

We all had lovely very thoughtful gifts but mom and dads electronic dart board didn’t work that well so that went back. Matty very skilfully flew his drone into the washing up water and killed it, he was gutted so Neil gave him his, other than that a great morning. Then time for Christmas part two over at Dennis and Jeans, more wonderful gifts and more wonderful food! Shattered and full to the brim!!

He's been!!!!

Helping out for tablet time.

Matty's handmade centerpiece. 

Merry Christmas everybody!!

Elfing around.

Boxing day was lunch out with Dennis and Jean, this was pretty much a last minute suggestion so when we found a local carvery with normal Sunday prices, yes NORMAL SUNDAY PRICES we were quite amazed. It was really enjoyable and so hassle free, after that is was back to Mom and Dads to disrupt them again.

Lovely hearts.

One of my gifts was a day out to The Crystal Barn for the sale, what a treat that was, I was so confused what to pop in my shopping basket that the only thing for it was to make sure I go again. I did eventually choose a huge Moroccan Quartz Geode that pretty much resembled a pumpkin, stunning, its stayed packed ready for shipment home – photos will follow. This is a great place if you want crystals, they truly have an amazing selection.

My favourite Labradorite...

Liking the decor here.

We had lunch in Kettering at the Kino Lounge a very lovely and unusual restaurant that was either the old cinema or market place, or maybe even both.

Almost time to go home, lots of packing to do as usual, its difficult going home after Christmas and New Years eve daytime was spent packing weighing and repacking bags, we did have a party to go to but felt it was cramming too much in and stayed home with Mom and Dad, Sarah came over and we had a Chinese take out, a few glasses of Advocaat and games, it turns out Ryan is pretty good at Dominoes and Sarah is a Connect 4 shark, the finale was a Dance Off by the boys much to our enjoyment, it was a really lovely evening. We had a few Happy New Year messages from our dear and much missed friends in Bulgaria at 10pm then we went to bed as the first morning of 2017 started for us at 5.30 am.

Goodbye 2016 and thank you for all of the wonderful things you had presented to us, its been a year of change, that’s for sure, we give thanks for health and wellbeing and for kindness, for opportunity, for strength and guidance and most of all for love, family and friendships old and new, lets open some doors and walk on right through them… Our next chapter is well underway!!!