hupa Hope you have a good time in England! I'd love to go back by car - for stocking-up purposes at any rate, but I don't think the journey itself would be much fun. The drive back to my parents' from the airport alone is enough for me (although we usually go by train now).
Our neighbours have a wood-burning stove, so we're selling the wood from the tree to them - they've worked out it will keep them going for six years, and don't have to lug it all up from the road either (I think we'd have had to pay around ?1000 to have it all taken away otherwise, so it's win-win).
outnumbered Good to see you back, but sorry to hear you've come back down to earth with a bump... it must be like the post-holiday blues x10. A friend of mine is going through something similar re a fourth child and said that the same as you, that she doesn't feel "done" yet. I have no helpful suggestions, I'm afraid; I used to like the idea of four, but when DS arrived I realised I'd reached my limit! And now that they're all at school, I just can't imagine going back to the baby/toddler stage again.
platanos How are you feeling now? It must be difficult with your DH away... and how frustrating about the vegan food; I would have thought that Italian restaurants would be able to cater to vegans much more easily than most places. As well as encouraging all restaurants to have a vegan dish, I think they also need to be persuaded to have a choice of more than one vegan/vegetarian meal - particularly those places that have about 30 meat dishes. And no, fish is not an acceptable alternative.
MrTumbles I think we may be past the stage where the DC take friendship books into school now - they doesn't seem to be as popular among boys as girls at school, although that may change when DS goes into the 1. Klasse, I suppose. None of the DC have brought one home since DS left KiGa, anyway, so fingers crossed!
The last bit of the tree was finally chopped down at about 7 pm on Saturday, and our garden (and the neighbours') is now full of wood - plus our garden has a largeish hole where the last piece of trunk fell. One of the tree cutters is coming to cut up the last of the wood tomorrow, so I really need to warn our elderly neighbour today. She didn't seem too bothered about when the tree was going to be cut down originally (I said I'd let her know, but she said she'd see when the tree cutters arrived), but was very huffy on Saturday, said no one had informed her that they would be coming back and she'd had to cancel a friend's visit. If I don't see her today (fingers crossed), DH said he would phone her tonight - and remind her that they didn't inform us when they had all the trees along their path cut down a few years ago, which disturbed DS's naps (well, it could have done!).