It’s all celebrations and presents this year

It’s all celebrations and presents this year and I’m certainly not complaining. Last Sunday was our Ruby wedding anniversary and instead of counting myself lucky if I get a card, my hubby bought me a beautiful pair of white gold earrings with diamonds and rubies. We went to Richmond park for lunch with our son and daughter in-law and came home to our daughter cooking dinner for us. A wonderful day and very restful, I even found time for my yoga class in the morning.

It has been a busy half term week, I had my nephew’s girls for a couple of days. A friend of mine had organised a local bug hunt on Tuesday but sadly wild horses couldn’t drag the girls there! It’s so unfair, why does nobody in my family like bugs? I suggested to the girls that we could look for Adders on the common near my sister’s house in the Spring and they were horrified at the thought. Anyway, it is the only place I have ever seen a wild Adder so I will be going, even if it is on my own!

The bug room is quite neat and tidy this week I have been trying to keep it that way since the restock last month. I don’t like working in a mess and I must also admit that I had a couple of customers call in this week (which always makes me tidy up). I haven’t had a lot of orders to post but I did have a very big order placed for tarantulas in the middle of the week which was very welcome. Blue may be a miserable colour as in “feeling blue” but for tarantulas it is certainly a happy colour as blue spiders seem to always sell best. This large order contained the Blue Footed Baboon, Cambodian Blue, Sapphire Ornamental, Blue Pink Toe, Green Bottle Blue and Brazilian Blue, that is a lot of blue tarantulas!

My hubby did finally lacquer the wasps nest which I removed from our shed after the wasps had died off for the winter. It has turned into a real saga, I moved the nest into my office as a couple of wasps were still alive and flew off around the house when I left it on the breakfast bar. They don’t bother me but my nephew is allergic to wasp stings. I wasn’t too happy to find that there were some sort of fly maggots crawling out of it and now that it is finally dried out and lacquered it is sitting on the dining room table and I haven’t got a clue what to do with it. It is still incredibly delicate I think it needs to go into a glass cube and be put on display. The trouble is that it is pretty big and I’m not sure even I want it in the living room. It seemed like a good idea at the time!

Last week I told you about my daughter’s very special birthday gift but I ran out of time to mention my son’s special birthday present. He gave me a little map of Costa Rica and wrote on it that he was taking me there at the end of the year (along with his wife and dad). I have tears in my eyes as I write this, most of you will know that last year was the worst year of my life and Costa Rica is my dream destination for bug hunting and animal watching. I’m sure we will have an amazing trip. On the weekend of my birthday I already had tickets to the Destinations holiday show at Olympia. Hubby and I had a great day at the show, we spent ages talking to a guy from the Costa Rica tourist board. He knew everything there was to know about the country and was happy to answer all our questions. We collected plenty of information from him, maps and brochures and tales of amazing areas to visit. We have plenty to look at and lots of planning to do. I have friends going to Costa Rica in the spring, my brother went there last year, I know of a couple who went on honeymoon there and saw Costa Rican Zebra tarantulas in the wild. It sounds perfect! My daughter in-law has yet to be convinced. I think she is anticipating lazing on the beach and cocktails by the pool, I don’t mind a bit of that too but my main aim is to go exploring in the undergrowth. Another super thing is that Costa Rica is said to be very safe, so I can actually walk around bug hunting. When we went to Mexico a few years ago there was no way we could leave the hotel grounds, there were guards everywhere and some with guns! Evidently Costa Rica was voted the happiest place on earth recently (I thought it was Richmond park), that can’t be bad and according to Duo Lingo I am now 3% fluent in Spanish J

Must take Teddi for a walk, it’s not raining and it is slightly warmer so I plan to do more than the usual 10 minute, morning walk (must get my 10,000 steps done now that I have my Apple watch tracking me). I don’t think I mentioned my Open Afternoon a couple of weeks back. The reason being it was another “Billy no mates” afternoon. I give up, well for now, perhaps I will try again when the weather warms up. I’m not really upset, transport around here is pretty rubbish. People do come and visit but sadly I just can’t arrange it on the same day or a day that suits me J (I’ve discovered I can do a smiley face on my blog and I was told Emoji’s couldn’t be added – that would be a smug face if I knew how L)