And so this is Christmas

I worked this morning. It was nice actually, everyone (staff and borrowers) were in festive moods and calling Merry Christmasses to each other hither and thither. Yvonne asked me to do a display first thing of the RAW stuff so I changed shelves around, backed the wall with bright yellow and did arty things with posters and leaflets. She was very enthusiastic about it and how well I’d done so that was nice :). Karen, who used to do all the displays had her last day yesterday and as noone else seems remotely interested in taking that role on and the couple of things I have done have been so well received I am fairly confident that will become my little thing – which is great, if I could have chosen any area I’ve been itching to get my hands on since I started it would be the displays and arty stuff :). I’ll also be doing Storytime fortnightly and Baby Rhyme Time fortnightly too – neither of which are particularly my calling in life as such but certainly ring the changes and add positive work experience to my CV – if life events conspire to keep me working there I reckon this second year there is going to be rewarding and enjoyable for me :). I also spent a happy hour on the enquiry desk which given the library was very quiet meant I got to browse fantasticfiction for most of the time and pre-order all the interesting looking books coming out over the next couple of months, securing me reading matter of the crisp brand new, first person to have read that copy to make up for not getting a pile of chick-lit as Christmas pressies from anyone :).

Ady picked me up at 1pm and we headed into Worthing to get the Christmas shopping. Aside from the DSs and a couple of other bits I’ve picked up over the months we didn’t have a great deal for Davies and Scarlett. They’d both requested two specific DS games each so they were top of our list. We found a parking space really easily and went straight to Game. They had various offers on there including some games on buy one get one free and some on buy one get one half price. Davies wanted The Simpsons (which was on BOGOHP) and Crazy Frog (which I’d already got pre-owned from ebay) and Scarlett wanted the Dalmation Nintendogs (in stock but not part of any offer) and ‘anything to do with cats’ – which was sorted with a BOGOF offer on Purrfect Pets. Except that meant we had one full price and two on two different offers which didn’t seem to be making the most of the bargains really. Ady stayed there browsing while I dashed round to Gamestation and Woolworths to check their offerings, neither of which remotely compared so I returned to Ady and he’d found a Harry Potter game also in the BOGOHP offer. Cooking Mama has been highly recommended by other parents as a good one and that was in the BOGOF deal so we ended up getting Simpsons and Harry Potter with one half price, the Nintendogs at full price and Cooking Mama and Purrfect Pets on BOGOF. We also got a Simpsons DS Lite bundle thing each for them for £12.99 each with a case, couple of game cases, spare stylus’ and emergency charger and headphones. For £130 we got five games and the 2 bundles so that was a bit of a result and means both children get an extra game they aren’t expecting :).

Next we decided we were hungry so walked down to the bakers for baguettes and I finally got my watch strap replaced. We walked round ELC and were astounded to realise there wasn’t anything in there we’d buy for either child even if we had the money which made us feel quite old :lol:. We went to the Works and got various bits and pieces – a book for my Mum, a fairy writing set for Tarly, a big box of pink and purple crafty bits for Tarly and then across to the cheapo card shop for Christmas cards for family who won’t be satisfied with the picture cards of D and S that everyone else has got and loads of rolls of wrapping paper (3 for a quid and I’ve wrapped everything now with still a couple of rolls leftover meaning I spent less than £3 altogether on paper :)). Our time on the meter was nearly up by then so Ady took the bags and went back to the car while I went to Woolworths for a sew-your-own-doll-kit for Tarly and then the other The Works (we have two The Works shops – one seems to specialise more in the art stuff and the other more in the books) where I got the bulk of what I wanted – two really cool interactive atlas books with stickers and magnetic bits and stuff, a set of nice watercolours in a block with proper watercolour paper for Tarly, a set of tubes of watercolour, some nice brushes and a pallet, a set of charcoals and an artists dummy and pads of watercolour and pastel paper for Davies who spends so much of his time creating art work these days that the old wax crayons and value felttips we have really are not up to the job anymore and I like the idea of respecting what he’d doing enough to give him the proper tools and materials to do it.

I walked back to the car and we went off to Dad’s to collect Davies and Scarlett who had been there with him and Frazer for the afternoon. Both of them have this cold which Ady woke up with this morning and this evening my throat has been tightening so I suspect I will be nursing it too by the morning. Coupled with that and my Mum letting them stay up til some ungodly hour last night they were both rather delicate and were both in tears all over me within five minutes of us arriving :roll:. They did manage to pull themselves together sufficiently in the end and, as planned, we headed off to Sainsburys. As we’re going to my Mum and Dad’s for Christmas Day we don’t have any real need to buy special food but like the idea of having nice stuff around so we do a free rein, buy all sorts of luxury items shop with the children when we say ‘yes’ to as many food requests as is feasible – we also stock up on alcohol :). We’ve got Mum and Dad here for curry on Christmas Eve so we needed bits for that and we have Boxing Day to ourselves and plan to sit around DSing, watching TV, burning lots of logs and eating lots of nice food all day so most of the supplies are for that.

As promised, for being shunted around a bit today and being good all round Sainsburys and indeed because they too have tolerated the money-less month we’ve just had we bought McDonalds for the childrens’ tea on the way home which they sat and ate while watching The Simpsons while I had a long bath. I put together pizzas, the children went to bed and then I wrapped most of the presents and ensured we had about equal volumes for each child.

I’ve inevitably thought of various little bits and pieces we could do with so we might pop out in the morning for those and we are going over to Chris and Julie’s tomorrow afternoon for our pre-Christmas get together. But for now, it’s been a very long day and I am ready for my bed.