February

How quickly time goes by.

My parents used to say that. That when you get older, time goes by faster.

I never believed it then, but now I do!

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So another month. February. 2012.

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We went to Austria for a week. We stayed for 7 days in the Tirol region, and enjoyed it very much. The hotel was super dodgy, but what can we expect from super cheap? It was central in the region, and that was good enough.

There was lots of snow. It was gorgeous. We walked in it. We drove through it. We enjoyed it very much.

At the end of that week, we had intended to go on to Vienna for 3 days, but Craig wasn't feeling well, and was actually concerned that he might be getting shingles, so we went home instead. Our doctor confirmed that it was not shingles (thank goodness).

And upon our return, the cold weather came to Amsterdam. Lovely! The temperatures got to below zero (well below) and stayed there for a couple of weeks. The canals froze up and for the first time in years, we were able to get on to the ice. I'd sold my ice-skates earlier in the winter, because I didn't think I'd be using them again, so we walked instead!

It even snowed one morning, and because the temperature stayed below zero, the snow stayed too. The city looked lovely all dressed in white :-)

We were reminded again and again of our children, whenever we saw families on the ice. Mum with child, dad with child, little kiddies with their skates on, doing amazingly well, or just learning.

Craig and I discussed that Freyja (at 5 and a half years old) would have been a pro on ice-skates. Even Kees, who just turned 4 on 1 February, would have been skating like a little ice-demon. And Jet, at 2 and a half, would have probably had the two-bladed learning skates on. All three would have been on the ice and they would have loved it!

How painful to look at all those children and families, who were having such fun, and wish that we could be there too with our children.

Just goes to show that everywhere we go, and every thing that we do, we are reminded again and again of what we are missing, of what our children should be doing.

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I've had dental dramas. Already for months.

I can't remember if I blogged about it at the time, but in October last year I had a crown put on one of my molars. It all seemed to go very well at the time, and I had complete confidence in my dentist.

However, since the day they started drilling at my tooth (to drill out the old filling) in preparation for my crown, the nerve of that tooth has been painful.

When the crown was placed I discussed the pain at length with my dentist, and he suggested that the pain would most likely go away once the crown was placed, and the trauma to the tooth lessened.

Except it didn't. Go away, I mean. In fact it got worse. So I returned to the dentist 6 weeks after the crown was placed, and he took another x-ray, but didn't see anything. So off I went again. And the pain continued to worsen.

Until last week, when I went back to the dentist. He took another x-ray, saw nothing again, and referred me to a root canal specialist. I took a week of antibiotics, on the off chance that an infection was causing the problem, but it wasn't.

So yesterday was Root Canal Day. What fun.

I'm very peeved at my dentist. About the whole process. Because now my tooth is worse off than it was before the crown (and the root canal). Before the crown, the tooth was nearly 50-70 % filling, so that's why I had the crown. Because I thought it would be better for the tooth. But the nerve was fine, not a single moment of pain.

But it wasn't better. Now I have a tooth with a crown (expensive and painful), which was promptly ruined because the root canal specialist drilled into the crown and filled the roots and the crown with filling. And she destroyed and remove the nerve in the process. (Also very expensive.)

What a waste of time, money, and a (better than now) tooth.

How I wish I had never had the crown down. I shall certainly know better if this ever happens again.

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Next week we are going to the UK. The car needs it's MOT. So we decided to stay a bit longer and see a bit more of England. We'll be taking the caravan with us - our home away from home. I hope we'll have a nice time, and that the car will behave itself, and that no-one will crash into our caravan (as they did last year in May).