Madhouse diaries : Life goes on

Looking at this photo that I snapped the other day, it's impossible to tell if it's a sunrise or sunset, an end or a new beginning, and to be honest, it doesn't matter - you still get the same moody skies and pretty colours. I decided that it rather nicely summed up the mood at The Madhouse recently. We're still coming to terms with Madhouse Daddy's death and trying to work out if life (and plans and fun and laughter) needs to be starting up again and carrying on as usual, or if we need to do things differently, or whether we should all be sitting around moping and feeling sorry for ourselves. Well, to be honest, it's a bit of a mixture of all of that.

Most of the time, we're sticking to traditions with a twist. Every Saturday morning, we all used to bundle in the car and head off to Burger King for a kicking-off-the-weekend catch-up and chill-out. Now, I let the kids take it in turns to pick their fast-food restaurant of choice and we all head off on the bus. In the evenings, the kids used to eat early (around 6.30/7pm) and the adults would eat later (around 8.30pm) when Madhouse Daddy had got home from work and chilled out. Now, I'm eating at the same time as the kids, which is actually a nice new tradition as we all get to sit round the dinner table together. It also means the evenings are much longer so, when the weather is nice, it gives us time to take the dogs out for a walk by the canal to watch the sunset.

With two dogs and three kids, this can often lead to squabbles over who gets to hold the leads, so I decided to get Pierre's bike out of the garage too. He was happy to burn off some energy before bedtime.

Remember all my moody landscape photos from Norway on my recent work trip to Stavanger? Well, the perfectly still canal along this route gives equally impressive reflections.

The smiles are still looking a bit stilted, but we'll get there eventually.

Easter Sunday was a bit of a tricky one - it was always Madhouse Daddy who hid the eggs all over the patio and in the house, so I asked the kids what they wanted to do : give it a miss this year or should I take over on Easter Bunny duties? We went for the "same but different" option again - instead of hiding big eggs, I just dotted some mini eggs and Kinder Surprise eggs all over the place.

It all seemed a bit half-hearted but Pierre got well into the spirit of things - as did the dogs !

The cheeky grin says it all. I've always been a glass-half-full kinda girl so we're definitely looking at new beginnings.