The visit

 We got home about an hour ago.  All 3 of us, Betty included, are shattered.....Betty ate her dinner as soon as we got in (she'd not eaten much the past couple of days, due to a mixture of excitement and anxiety) and has been asleep on the sofa ever since.

Sister and I caught up on 2 years' worth of hugs......it seems daft, but I'd almost forgotten how tall she is, she's about 4 or 5 inches taller than me (I'm the shorty in the family, despite being the eldest).  Both my nephew and niece tower over me too.  So we all cuddled, cried, chatted and laughed non stop, cuddled some more - well, when Covid and circumstances have kept family apart for 2 years, keeping our distance was just not going to happen.  We'll do LF tests again, Monday and Wednesday probably, just to check we've not caught Covid, and don't plan on going anywhere unnecessarily next week.  All I want to do is catch up on sleep anyway!

We are finding it more difficult to go all that way now - it took us nearly 4 hours on the way up, 3.5 hours coming home.  My back and hips have coped, although I am stiff and will, I'm sure, be even stiffer tomorrow.  Husband finds the long drive very tiring, physically and emotionally, as do I.  We did break the journeys, of course.  Although the hotel room was absolutely fine with regard to cleanliness and comfort, we do find them very noisy - budget hotels have very little sound insulation so we could hear people walking up and down the corridors, doors slamming, talking loudly and laughing - all throughout the night!  (What are they doing, and why is it necessary to be so loud about it, don't they realise - or care - that most guests are trying to sleep in the early hours of the morning?!).  Betty, being the self appointed guard dog with superhero hearing that she is, kept jumping up and running to the door and woofing gently every time she heard someone, so that kept me awake too.  And because she's out of her normal routine, she gets a bit anxious and goes off her food.  So we don't know how much longer we can keep making the journey, it does take it out of us, much more so we found this time.

Sis's new bungalow (they moved 7 months ago) is really lovely, as is the garden, she does love gardening and has big plans for it this year.  We were so busy catching up and her showing me everything that I totally forgot to take any photos - I don't think I got my phone out of my bag once, until we got back to the hotel yesterday evening (when I posted that quick update).  

Right, we've just had a quick tea, I'm going to watch the musicals thing that's on at 7 pm, and then I'm going to bed.  I'm feeling very emotional right now, sis and younger brother, who we also visited, have lots of reminders of Mum in their houses, I brought home a garden ornament that used to belong to Mum, sister had been keeping it for me.