A Quiet House.

Typically the sun shone for the last day of the family visit. However there is a weather warning out for severe rain and winds for the next few days.I always take a group picture of the youngsters at the end of each visit.

L to R. Vicky & Romas, Vytas & Kate B, Linas, Rachel & Alex.

There was much hilarity with a plastic spider at the lunch table. (Neither Rachel or Alex like spiders so I have to get rid of as many of the house spiders as possible before they visit.) Vytas & Kate and the Eedles left after lunch but everyone will be meeting up next week-end for a SK muster.
The family visits are a bittersweet time for me. I miss my family and look forward to their visits but when they do come ( we only saw Vytas 3 times last year) I feel I become an invisible person whose role is to live in the kitchen. This is especially disappointing because I thought I had brought up my boys to see everyone as equal but I suppose that they feel that this is their holiday. It makes me very sad to feel that they have so little consideration or respect for me as a person.
Now that Peter's arthritis stops him doing manual work about the place I always imagine that when the boys come down they will help out with some of the jobs that I find difficult but this doesn't happen and I don't like to ask too many times and end up being seen as a nag. They just go off and do their own thing. Once everyone left I spent a couple of strenuous hours raking and shovelling the drive repairing the damage done by the week's rain. Romas (having returned from a trip to town) did do a little work on the drive before leaving me to clear the whole of the central ditch. He has, after some insistence, put wood across the bottom of our neighbour's road to divert the water that pours down the hill in bad weather. All we need to do now is repair the sky tv cable that has been pulled out of the box and we're set for the bad weather.