Sshh!

All is quiet at home, very, very quiet. For me this is the sad part of the holiday knowing that it will be months before I see my boys again. Indeed last year it was Easter until I saw Romas and August before Vytas returned home. Linas is that much closer and does come back for the occasional week-end. But today the house is almost silent, even Peter has gone into town to get some things from the DIY store. I started taking down the cards yesterday (recycled into shopping list cards or next year's gift tags) and this morning I took down all the decorations. Before the boys left the tree was cut into burnable pieces and if I'm lucky the decorations will be soon packed away and back up in the loft. (Last year's tree decorations spent the whole year in a bag under a side table in the living room.)

Yesterday's lack of post (when I was going to detail my New Year's resolutions), was due to a major pc disaster. I've had the parts for a pc upgrade sitting here for some months so the boys decided that they would swap everything over yesterday. That way Romas could have my old hard drive etc to replace his which had finally bitten the dust. Unfortunately the end result was 3 dead pcs - DISASTER! I need my pc for work and Romas also has vital work to do for uni. More hours spent resulted in my pc being back up and running with all the old parts but the new mother board is no more, possibly static has killed it. Poor Romas has taken his salvaged parts back to uni but needs to buy a new mother board and some other vital parts. Such a shame. Romas and Vytas had been really helpful in the last few days, laying the new hall carpet, washing my car, putting extra lagging on the outside pipes and climbing up into the loft to blow out some of the airlocks in the plumbing. Our plumbing is not back completely but we have running hot and cold to most of the taps, what luxury. You think you appreciate your home comforts but doing without really makes you realise how good it is to have heat and water. It now feels like we are living in utter luxury.

This morning I repaired a pair of slippers that Romas likes to wear all the time. New furnishing fabric soles and a felt patch made Vicky's old slippers like new.

Yesterday the boys had planned to play a wargame but the pc swap disaster took up the whole evening so I took a photograph of part of their armies before they packed them away.

Lots of school work done this afternoon with just a little left to do tomorrow before our return to work on Tuesday.