All the creatures were stirring, particularly the mouse

We had storms here all night, kept me awake for hours. D’you know I truly think that very rare but there just the same sleeplessness is easily my most obvious sign of feeling like a grown up nowadays. Mortage, marriage and motherhood never really did it for me, but lying there awake due to the wind or the rain or worrying about money somehow makes me feel more like ‘someone’s mother’ and a proper adult than anything else.

I made our first batch of mince pies today, from my own homemade mincemeat that I made earlier in the week. I was still doing that when Ros arrived so we stood chatting in the kitchen while Davies and Adam played X box and Tarly dragged Ellie around to play. Tarly adores Ellie, she is easily her favourite ‘big girl’ but very amusingly seems to be the one taking Ellie by the hand and leading her about. 😆 Amelia hung out in the kitchen for a while before deciding we were boring and going to play with the geomags instead. 😆 Dad and Ady went logging and came back in time for mince pies.

Ros & co left and Ady cooked lunch while me and the children made paper snowflakes. Tarly did lots of playing on Barbie.com on Ady’s laptop, Davies and I played Battleships and Connect 4 and then they played with the sticklebricks.

We had (a later than planned) lunch and did plenty of lazing around this afternoon. Ady dug out the children’s Christmas trees from the loft and found evidence of mice. They had chewed through a cloth advent calendar and lots of a cardboard box filled with low carb food from when we did The Atkins Diet. He found one and disposed of it, cleaned and hoovered the loft space out and sprayed it with all sorts of chemically sprays so hopefully their stay here is over. Bet I lay awake tonight listening for sounds of scrabbling in the loft 🙄

We put trees up in Davies and Scarlett’s bedrooms, I read them the first three books in our advent calendar with 24 books telling the story of A Christmas Carol. Tonight I’ve gathered all Tarly’s birthday presents up from various hidey holes and wrapped them all.

I had a load of items finishing on ebay today and was bidding for a load more. At one point my paypal balance went down to just 20pence, but then some of my auctions ended and it went back up to £30 odd again. We also found a load more things ready for ebaying that the mice hadn’t touched in the loft.

And now, as the lights and the broadband connection keep flicking on and off (must be the wind!) I’m off to bed.