Waving goodbye

I shall be seeing the EFG off on the train this morning as she makes her way to Leicester for a conference, from which she will head to Aberdeen for the next term and the beginning of her third year.  She will be coming back from Leicester to Peterborough, where cousins live, and I shall meet her there on Friday with her luggage; a cousin is taking her back to Aberdeen from Peterborough, and they are leaving at about 6am on Saturday, so it makes sense for her to stay with them on Friday night and make their departure on Saturday as smooth as possible.  We hope that her third year at Aberdeen will be good, and a little less stressful now that she has new flatmates who are hopefully a little more balanced than one of the ones she had last year who was rather volatile. I can't believe that she is 20 years old now and half way through her degree.......makes me feel old!

She's been here since mid-May and we have again to get used to being without her - but we are getting more practised at it now, so it should be OK!  We haven't got the foreign girls this year, so it is going to be quiet here, but the YFG will have to knuckle down and work hard in her A level year, and I have gone from 20 to 30 hours at work since last September, so we are both going to be busy and well occupied! The YFG has a pediatric first aid course to do this term, which will complement her gymnastics qualification, and she also has to do the actual Duke of Edinburgh expedition in September.  I'm hoping the decent weather continues for them as I think they are heading to the Lake District....

A new financial challenge starts here tomorrow on the 1st September, so we are also looking forward to getting started on that - we have had so many financial drains this summer that we really need to boost the coffers. The EFG will turn 18 next summer and all our bereaved parent and family-related benefits will cease [as they should: I am not complaining] but there is a real chance that she will stay at home and take on more study or an apprenticeship and so I will continue to support her financially without those benefits, so we are already looking at living on that amount.

God continues to bless us and provide all that we need, but we do have to be good stewards of that provision, and we are looking at what we really need and what we choose to buy sometimes that might not really be necessary.