Yellow and Blue

What a beautiful day today - bright yellow sunshine and blue skies. However we spent the day seeing a different type of yellow and blue - we were inside IKEA for most of the day :(

As both Luke and Adam are moving from student shared houses into their own accommodation when they respectively start work and research after they graduate, there is a long, long list of things to get to help set them up. Today we made a start looking at furniture at IKEA to get ideas, and we made a start on buying some basic kitchen things that they will need. It took hours! We were starving half way through so we stopped off for lunch - the boys tucked into the famous Swedish meatballs, as shown here,  while I had a very light lunch of smoked salmon and some lettuce leaves (not my choice but due to dietary intolerances it was the only option). It was exhausting but we finally got home again at about 4pm and then made lists of all the outstanding kitchen stuff they still need which was then followed by searching for best prices on Amazon and John Lewis. It's a pity that they are both at this stage of their lives at the same time as it is a double whammy when it comes to the cost of all the things required to set them up - and we are only getting the basic requirements, the nice stuff will follow when they are earning and can buy it themselves.

Poor Murdoch seems to still be in pain today. The reason he had his teeth cleaned was not for aesthetic reasons but quite necessary because as a dog gets older their teeth get covered in plaque which can then get infected leading to losing them, which obviously causes difficulty with eating. He is on a diet of softly cooked chicken and rice (and I added carrots too which he loves). Today, for the first time ever, when we walked outside to go for his walk he just stood there and then turned around and went back inside again. The vet said he would be fine by today, so maybe he needs one more day to recover.