Saturday, February 24, 2007

Ciao Georgio!

Well, that's the boy away for an entire week. As I type this, the coach filled with students from Lockerbie Academy will be rolling onto the ferry at Dover. They'll travel all night through France and get to the Mont Blanc Tunnel. Once through that, he's in Italy where he will be enjoying an entire week of skiing in Italy's Aosta Valley.
We had a big morning of packing him a huge bag of food. They're going to be on this coach for about 21 hours. I made certain that all of his clothing choices were appropriate to the occasion, clean and pressed. He has his spending money, deck of cards and a surprise gift of travel Battleship! (I put a book in his bag too, just in case he gets bored. I live in hope.)
You can see from the photo that Henry has his "match day" shirt on. Right after we waved George off on his merry way, we pointed the car east towards Sunderland and The Stadium of Light. George wasn't going to be around to use his season ticket for today's game, so I went instead.
The game today was against Derby (pronounced DARbee) County. The final score was Sunderland 2 -Derby County 1!!! We won!!!!! Sunderland scored the winning point in the last minute of injury time. Talk about jubilation!! I haven't been to a home game since before Henry's mother passed away and I had a great time! I wish I had brought the camera into the stadium so you could see how full it was. 36,000 fans were there today.
The Man of the Place and I will have an entire child free week together. Aside from occasional sleep-overs that George has been on, we have never spend a chunk of time in our own home without children. We will be getting a week long window into what life is going to be like for us in five years. We stopped by a supermarket on our way home from the game. It was liberating to know that we could buy just about anything. Nobody to accuse of trying to poison them with mushrooms or spinach. We also had to remember to scale down the amounts we bought. Its just for the two of us.
Tomorrow I'm off with Polly the Wonderdog to The Lake District and Coniston for a Northern Staffordshire Bull Terrier Picnic Club Walk. Fingers crossed for good weather. The camera is coming with me.

4 comments:

Joy Des Jardins said...

I hope George has a wonderful and exciting time. A whole week to yourselves, huh? You definitely may find out a few things in that time Peg. Time alone is very nice as it goes, but I'm betting you'll be very happy to see George at the end of it all. Enjoy Peggy....

Anonymous said...

A whole childless week is a treasure, but as Joy said, it's so wonderful to have them back.
Enjoy!

Xtreme English said...

somewhere on a bus driving through France.....do you suppose george is eating? playing cards? or....sleeping? that's my guess. maybe he's already arrived.

meanwhile, mom and dog are having a swell time in the lake district. did henry go, too? or did he stay home for a delicious sunday nap?

Peggy said...

Joy - I'm sure I will be glad to have him home. It's odd not having him here.

Claude - Thanks. We intend to enjoy it!

Mama X - Henry had an oxygen handling course in Carlisle, so he did that.