Celebration or not?

Once J had left yesterday, we decided to go out for a meal as a family. First Hannah persuaded Paul to paint some wood for curtain holders for her bedroom - we have been here over 2 months now and still Hannah doesn't have curtains - we suggested she sleep in the room J had been using but the pretty pink princess canopy and bedcovers don't appeal. Then I tried to persuade Paul to mend the washing machine, but he wasn't able to do it in the ten minutes I gave him. Then he decided to apply online for the visa he needs to get into the USA for his Boston trip - this seemed to involve quite of lot of sighing and looking for passports etc plus wondering at the words which are not really words to us eg. expiration rather than expiry.
Anyway we finally got out to our favourite pizza restaurant (well actually wholly pizza is our favourite but is not open on Wednesday nights) Pompeii pizza, where we managed to demolish 2 colossus size pizzas between us (and a kids size just cheese one for Noah). The spicy Thai beef with cashew nuts is just wonderful.
We called it a celebration of being a small family again (rather than a celebration of J leaving!) although there were still 6 of us!
Then Paul and I weighed up spending time repairing the washing machine versus going to see "Last chance Harvey" and the movie won!! So we dashed home got the boys to bed and left Hannah babysitting while Paul and I sat and enjoyed Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman (we have just watched him again in "The Graduate" and it was amazing how similar his character and acting was in this).
Paul is now at a two day away clinic in Gisborne so I'm without a washing machine until the weekend!
Breakfast time was quite relaxed today without the usual rows and policing surrounding J. This afternoon I was pleased when the caregiver social worker visited and said J was with a very nice new caregiver.
We plan now to enjoy the break from fostering, have a school holiday with just our family and not resume fostering until after Lily's birthday trip to Disneyland.