Word Of The Week – Swap

I haven’t had much blogging time over the past few weeks. We had the excitement of the Christmas build-up and we all just shut down over the Christmas holidays. It was a quiet one partly through choice and partly because of illness. As we headed into the new year we suddenly got very busy again, we knew we would. I had to choose the word swap, to sum up, our time over the past few weeks because a few things have been swapped around. These things have had an impact on our family.

The first swap, which I knew was changing before the Christmas holiday was job-related. Before covid hit I went back to full-time working from home for the artwork team in my company. I had worked with them on and off on different projects but they wanted me to commit more hours to their team to help with new clients. When I returned to work in January I switched teams. Joining my old team again but learning new things. It has been an interesting journey so far but also tiring as I’m learning new skills.

I have also had to swap one of my longer working days for the next few months. Little E has a ‘well-beeing’ after-school club she has been invited to attend. This means that one day a week I have to do two evening school runs. It impacted my working day too much and it is just easier to swap my routine for a few weeks.

We had a swap happen to our heating system. We had our air source heat pump system serviced before Christmas and apparently one of the parts wasn’t right. The house builders came in to swap a part last week but it has upset our system. This past weekend our heating just doesn’t want to work like it was and isn’t heating the house correctly. Just what you need on a very cold weekend! They are coming back to look at the system on Monday to try to work out why it has got itself in a pickle.

This year we were trying to take the children to Florida again but we have decided to swap our plans for something completely different. Instead of going away, we have decided to get a dog. We have wanted a dog for a long time but we weren’t in the right house. Then it felt like we were waiting for the right time around holidays but we have decided getting a dog is the right thing for right now.

We did look into adopting a dog as we thought that would be the best option for our family. They didn’t want to approve us because of Ethan’s autism. To say this upset me is an understatement. So we are now going down the puppy route which we know will be hard work but it might be the best thing for Ethan and Little E. Being a younger dog will hopefully mean they can adjust to our crazy and our routines. So now we are counting down the days until our lives change and we become a dog family. Ethan isn’t totally sure about it yet. Little E is just a big ball of excitement.