The last month has been more settling in - especially for Neil at school. The majority of his classes are fine (I've even heard them described as 'lovely'!) though a couple of classes of the youngest pupils are a little (well, alot) trying. But Neil has just the right disposition to deal with it and it doesn't phase him - he's great!
We've been familiarising ourselves with more of the city and enjoyed a picnic on the Downs - can't believe how many people hang out there on a Saturday afternoon - Matthew loved the open space to chase his football and Neil took the opportunity to catch up on his sleep (Matthew has decided that 5am is an acceptable time to start the day - we beg to differ)!


Matthew and I are discovering what's going on for little people and their parents. We've been to a couple of playgroups and recently ventured to a soft play warehouse for the first time - which was obviously a hit!


It's been a little strange as I've known that we won't be living in this area but last weekend we finally found a house to rent nearer the centre of Bristol which hopefully means it will be easier to make more meaningful connections with people. The house is lovely and large and we'll be sharing with friends, the Kellys, from the beginning of June.

Finally finding a house was nothing compared to our other big event of the weekend - celebrating Matthew's first birthday! I can't believe he's one but at the same time it feels ages ago that he was born and so much has happened in a year that he surely should be older!
Anyway, the day was lovely and included phone calls from NZ (Matthew was hugely excited when he heard Emma's voice over Skype and appeared to be looking around searching for her!), family came for lunch and then some local friends (older and younger) arrived for a 'party' in the afternoon. It was a very wet day (as are many at the moment) so we all went hyper inside but I think we all coped for an hour. Big thanks to Andy and Debs for allowing everyone to invade and there will be pictures to come but we were too busy to take very many so I'm relying on family sending them to us...