One word? When seven would do…

is what Ady, Davies, Scarlett and I have spent the latter part of the day dancing round shrieking at each other 🙂 🙂 🙂

This morning we spent some time pretending not to be thinking about the van, feeling touched by a very lovely text message offer (you know who you are 😉 love you x) and sorting out videos, dvds and cds ready for selling. We’ve slightly slowed up on the crap clearing, mostly because a lot of crap is indeed now cleared and so we can have the luxury of doing the rest slightly more slowly. We now have various piles – ones to keep and be boxed up (very small pile), ones to try and sell (big pile) and ones to just chuck (non existant pile as it has already gone in the bin which is collected tomorrow). We’ll give the piles on shot on ebay as job lots, collection only listings and then freecycle / give to friends. The same will apply to the books we’re not keeping. We need to go through clothes, now the weather has changed a bit summer clothes can be sorted at which point we can start to dismantle furniture too.

We did all get quite distracted by looking at a pile of photo albums. Scarlett had wanted to look at pictures of Malice and Candle so we dug out the albums. When Davies was born the cats were horrified (although they had both regularly sat on my bump while I was pregnant) and spent ages sniffing him in his car seat when we brought him home from hospital. They came round to the idea and when Scarlett was born the cats spent the duration of her birth sat curled up next to me with a full view of the whole procedings :), so for Scarlett there is a cat in the very first photograph ever taken moments after her birth.

The photo albums were great to look through, particularly the pics with friends in – some lovely pics of our first Melrose of Davies and Ben forming their friendship, a great one of Tarly’s fourth birthday party with a princess theme – Alex, Freya, Eve and Rei, Lulah and Claudia and Scarlett all looking so teeny and cute, a pic of Davies, Ben and Marcus at our first Kessingland which is great to view alongside pics from last week of the three of them now and one of us, Chris & Alison, Chris & Helen and all the kids on Brighton beach the day after our Halloween party. It made us think we should all bring some photos along to Okehampton to look at all nostalgically – who’s up for that?

We could then pretend we weren’t thinking about the campervan no longer so I drove over to my parents to talk to them about it. I was incredibly nervous about this – they think the whole idea is crazy-bonkers, I was after borrowing money and expecting them to buy into a 29 year old campervan for us to take their grandchildren away from them for a year in. But I guess I underestimated them once again as just as they have surprised me recently with how great they were having Davies and Scarlett while we did the car boot sales they listened, sounded enthusiastic and agreed to come with me for a second look this afternoon.

We’d already decided to ring them and ask if they would take £2000 (it was advertised for £2500) which is the utter, utter bottom of the budget we were expecting to find. Come pay day on Friday we will have £1000 with the money we have saved, the funds raised from ebay and car boot sales, so half the money. My request of my Dad was a sub of the other £1000 until I can sell my car. I also wanted him to come and be the voice of reason, to pick holes and be cynical. He agreed and so I came home for lunch having arranged to ring him to come over if the seller agreed to an offer.

Ady rang – he is far better at such things – and after some chit-chat got them to agree to £2000 🙂 I admit to being very surprised at how easily they went for it but they had taken a shine to us, really fallen for the kids and wanted us to have it. We arranged to go over a bit later and my parents came over. Ady stayed home with the kids and I took Mum and Dad over.

Mum chatted to the wife, who really had fallen for Davies and Scarlett to the point of installing a pink and a blue sleeping bag on the over cab bunk and put a bag of toys on the seat for them 🙂 She got the back story about how the campervan is called Willow because the previous owner had to have a willow tree chopped down to make room to keep the van on their drive. Apparently she loves the idea of of going off in the van for a year and although is sad to see it go is really chuffed it is going to us :). The husband showed Dad and I round looking at more practical things such as where you fill and empty the water, where the hookup plugs in, where the spare wheel etc is and then started her up so we could hear her running.

I didn’t bother with a test drive as I know I will take a fair bit of getting used to it – it is huge, automatic (aside from two courtesy hire cars I’ve only ever driven manual) and I’m hardly going to change my mind based on how it drives…

So it turned out my voice of reason were by turn charmed by the female seller and the van being called Willow and the van itself and after a hushed conversation with my Dad I gave them £100 deposit and arranged to come back on Friday with the rest of the cash to take the van away 🙂 🙂

I was given a receipt for the deposit and a photograph they had of the van from it’s previous owners of it parked on the drive that the willow had been chopped down from.

Back at home everyone was very excited 🙂 Mum and Dad came in for a coffee and we all sat slightly in shock that we now have a campervan :).

Mum and Dad left, we finished sorting things ready for listing on ebay and Ady cooked a very speedy dinner as the kids wanted roast dinner but we’d gotten sidetracked so he managed some pheasant with roast and mashed potatoes and veg. We watched X Factor and the kids went off to bed, Ady sat researching anything he could find online about Bedford campervans and I’m still rather in shock!