One word? When seven would do…

which would be the opposite of the Christmas Staff Do, which is what we attended last night.

I have done many a Christmas Staff Do in my time; I’ve done sit down, buffet, no food at all. I’ve done dressy, casual, somewhere inbetween; I’ve done posh venue, trashy venue and on one memorable occassion multi-venue (the original venue was crap so we all decamped to someone’s house instead – all 70 of us!). If I wasn’t going out in half an hour I might try and list them, each year since my first – which was when I was just 16, so I have 15 years worth with several years attending of two (one my own, one Ady’s) – but I’ve a feeling that might be a lengthy blog post!

So last night’s was at a fairly posh hotel, happily just down the road from us. Even happier one of Ady’s colleagues (the pheasant dealer!) picked us up and dropped us home. We both wore black suits – Ady wore a shirt and tie with his, I wore cleavage and glitter on my nails – we were going to take a self timer photo so you could all enjoy the Nic & Ady do festive feeling for yourselves but the children both had fits about us going out so it was a bit hurried and harried in the end!

Mum arrived crying after a row with my Dad, Davies looked confused and bewildered to be left with a wailing woman in charge and Scarlett was refusing to come out of her bedroom (apparantly she did slam out of it a short time after we left and continued her protest in the bathroom instead! They were both asleep by the time we came home at 11 and neither seem too traumatised this morning though!).

We did the whole battling our way to the bar for overpriced drinks (£3.60 for a coke!!!!) first and then found the least drunken and offensive people to stand next to until we were called through for our meal. Lots of the others were staying at the hotel and had been there since lunchtime drinking (the men) and applying layers of make up, glitter and tinsel and gradually easing themselves into dresses they would like to be the size the label said! (the women). Ady’s not used to everyone not already knowing who I am so he was a bit rubbish at introducing me and my response to ‘and this must be your wife?’ was ‘no, I’m from an escort agency, his wife’s at home with the children!’ was met with odd looks from most people – except one man who ran with it to such a point he was still leaning across the table during dessert two hours later to make comments like ‘oh yes it’s a blonde woman on the picture on his desk’ – I wished I’d had some fake business cards made up actually as I think he would have been interested in the escort agency himself!

Food was lovely, I had plenty to drink, the very attractive man who works there and is the Anti-Ady – dark, dangerous and probably never hoovers – was happily not sat next to me so I couldn’t indulge in that misguided sort of flirting one does when imagining you are not just drunk and loud but really are the most attractive person in the room sparkling with wit, intelligence and the reason everyone is looking at you is because they are just jealous! The combination of lots of food and lots of drink led both me and Ady to a parents of young children slump around 10.30pm so we came home just as the ‘youngsters’ were filling the dance floor to YMCA!

I’d meant to do some sort of equivalent to last year’s nativity on the blog and never did get round to it – I might try and do something for New Year instead.

If I don’t make it back to blog again before I hope you all have a very, very Merry Christmas. Enjoy the challenge of getting your excited children to bed tonight and the magic of watching their faces tomorrow as they open their presents. Whatever it is you celebrate at this time of year I hope the meaning of Christmas is realised for you. xxx

which is nowhere near as silly as the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of Christmas eve type stuff that me and Frazer used to do when we were little!

Had a phonecall regarding finances yesterday which was not the anticipated good news or bad news but just news of further delay – ah well! 🙁

Nipped out to Boots with the children to get a couple of last minute pressies, it was busy, they were awful and I did that hissing type of shouting you do in public but I did manage to get everything I wanted though.

In the afternoon Davies played on the pc – a mix of the NickJr website and a Dora cdrom game. He seems to have clicked somehow with the idea of reading and is quite happily spelling words out to read them and also spelling his name on the keyboard without any hesitation – hands off has worked well for him and he is now doing it because he *wants* to, and asking for assistance when he can’t rather than me standing over him doing it because I want him to. 🙂 Scarlett and I played together although I can’t for the life of me remember at what but I know it made Davies all jealous!

Mum and I headed off to Tesco at 7pm ish to get Christmas food shopping, she’s finishing it off today and it was relatively painless -both in terms of the crowds being fairly small and the paying for it all being down to someone else! 😉 We got back here by about 8.30pm, Dad was already here and Ady cooked up sausage and mash for everyone.

About 1am Davies woke wailing and was sick 🙁 Not at all sure what that was about as he has been fine today and crawled into bed with me and went straight back to sleep where he slept through until gone 8am this morning. He is doing a lot of blinking and twitching and his behaviour is fairly typical of a small boy two days before Christmas really so I think it was probably just excitement and too many chocolate tree decorations!

Today we have had a nice day actually. This morning the children made Christmas cards for Ady while I wrapped all the remaining presents. Davies did a picture of Ady, me, Davies and Scarlett with a snowman and then with minimal help wrote ‘Daddy, Merry Christmas, Love Davies’ really nicely. Scarlett drew a picture of me dressed up as a Christmas tree (a pink one!), a picture of Ady dressed up as a robot, herself as a fairy and Davies as a snowman – fairly recognisable too! Then she copied her name for the first ever time and did an excellent job – it actually brought tears to my eyes to see her first ever attempt – very emotional!

Then we painted a mug each for Granny and Grandad from some kits we’ve had kicking around for ages – Davies did Granny’s and painted the word Granny and an underwater scene, Scarlett did Grandad’s so I painted Grandad and she did some vision in pink, which I’m sure he’ll love. They need to dry for 24 hours before being baked and then I can wrap them tomorrow.

My Dad arrived then and played with Tarly while I made a start on the final batches of mince pies I’ll be cooking this year (about 120 done today, that should last and if it doesn’t then I have no more mincemeat anyway – and if anyone leaves a recipe for one I will delete their comment 😉 !) and Davies played Zoombinis which he has been doing for hours today! Ah well, that’s educational! He’s sitting in the playroom with a Christmas cd playing and singing along to it as he plays – can’t believe he knows all the words to all the songs – clearly an inherited talent! 😉

Ady arrived home shortly afterwards and then David and Jeanette – the Thank You neighbours called over to deliver presents for the children and stayed for tea and mince pies. I realised too late that I have been calling the mother Doreen for ages and her name is Joyce – oops!

We’re about to settle down to watch A Christmas Carol on C4 and tonight Ady and I are off to his staff Christmas party – apparantly a few of them are looking forward to meeting me – this on the basis of being a Home Educator (bit odd!) and that Ady once had me on speakerphone in the office while I was talking to him and broke off to yell at someone about jumping the queue in a carpark (feisty and a bit scary!). Happily the frugal life seems to have meant I’ve lost a few lbs (I’d like to pretend it was stress and worry but the truth is that not drinking alcohol for half the week will have ensure the weight has come off – I was the same with both previous occassions of not drinking – pregnancy, so I know it to be the case. Fact is I’d rather be fat and pissed than skinny and sober, although I imagine the latter is probably more attractive 😉 ) so my nicest dressy suit fits me rather than requiring all sorts of uncomfortable scaffolding underneath – I will be accessorising it with sparkles and cleavage naturally!

I’m feeling really quite festive today – Christmas? Bring it on!

Just to see if it works really!

Had a lovely day yesterday at Ros’ open house. Ady managed to arrange his day so he could pick us up at lunchtime and drop us off at Ros’ then do some local stores to Eastbourne and come back after work. The main benefit of this was not that he got to see Ros and Tony too you understand although that was a happy addition, it was so that I could participate in festive mulled wine drinking! 🙂

I think we were the last to arrive so my two made themselves at home straightaway – Davies dashed off to play with Buzz and co, Scarlett joined me in the kitchen where the cheesy balls and mulled wine were. She did disappear for a while into the conservatory where Ros had thoughtfully provided glitter, glue, paper, card and other festive crafty bits for the children to chuck around the place and cover the tablecloth with! She also played with Pea and Boo lots later in the afternoon which was nice to watch. I spent most of my time there perched on a worktop in the kitchen talking to Let, who as Ros has previously mentioned and I am now able to confirm is lovely 🙂 She drinks and bitches too, so we got on very well! Also chatted to the procession of other HE folk who popped in and out of the kitchen – an ecclectic mix from the charming to the downright odd!

Ros then insisted (although I didn’t take much persuading!) that we all gather in the parlour for singing so we did that which was excellent and then people started to drift away. Ady arrived back and Ros very kindly fed our children (and offered to feed us too!) while Ady, Buzz and Davies watched films on the huge screen and the girls all made each other glittery things. Tony came home and we stayed for a bit more chatting before heading off for home.

Pictures of the day at Ros’ are here.ho

Tarly fell asleep on the way, Davies was asleep shortly afterwards, we had late dinner of curry that I’d bunged in the oven before we left and then I wrapped all the kids’ presents while watching Lost and topping up the alcohol level in my blood which had dipped to a frighteningly nearly sober level!

I then watched a really interesting programme about Live 8 before heading off to bed.

This morning I have been super efficient again – put all the clean, dry washing away, matched up loads of odd socks (in the summer I match them on the line and we never end up with odd ones, in the winter somehow we end up with loads of odd ones, what’s that about then?), cleaned the fish tank out and got another two loads of washing sorted. I’m waiting in for the IVA people to ring me back and let me know exactly what is going on and then we need to pop out to deliver two more Christmas cards and get a couple of bits. The children are playing a mazes game on the pc and exercising autonomy to it’s limits, I have a plan to make some home made sweets later for pressies for my parents so I might enlist their help in that, and in decorating some wrappings for them if we make them.

Tonight I’m going to the supermarket with my Mum to assist in the selection of festive food for the weekend, which I imagine will be a living bightmare! And I think that’s about it!

Right you lot can you not detect sarcasm and irony when you see it?! I’m not *really* a housewife. I’m Nic, you know, Nic, gets her cleavage out a lot, drinks too much and leaves all the housework to her trusty Adybloke.

And as for leaving recipes here I am disgusted with the lot of you! 😉

But to answer your question Merry I use the recipe I was taught by my very old fashioned home ec. teacher at my all girls school (before I went off the rails) which is half fat to flour – so 8oz SR flour with 4oz fat (use stork in foil for pastry normally), sift flour, add fat in small chunks and rub in til it resembles breadcrumbs.

Add a splash of water at a time, mix in with wooden spoon until bonded then knead it with your hands – secret of good pastry is as little handling as possible and to keep it cool, so I bung it in the fridge for 15 mins or so before using. (today I made two batches and then went to paint my nails, normally I would go and sit down and drink wine while I’m waiting!).

Mincemeat is the cheapest I can buy and then in flusher days I used to leave it soaking with brandy and add in chopped nuts and cherries (cheaper to buy them and add them yourself than to buy the luxury mince meat – and feels more authentic!).

I have no pastry cutters but pint glasses make the bottoms and skinny glasses make the tops – or as today I used the forbidden word shapes instead, prick with a fork, brush with some milk and bung in the oven. Drink more wine while they cook.

When they come out I sprinkle icing sugar over them with a sieve which hides any imperfections and gives them the buxom wench feel – serve with more wine! I was even complimented by a small child on them today! 😉

About the only type that suits me really!

Very industrious morning here chez Goddard. I have made 48 mince pies with star-shaped tops which amused the children greatly as they are apparently ‘just like sneetches!’ of the star-bellied variety as described by Dr Seuss! Also made a load of pastry stars for Davies who doesn’t actually like mince pies so I normally make him empty ones – loads of pastry stars sprinkled with icing sugar have delighted him!

Have also done 3 loads of washing and now have some tumble drying and the rest draped artfully round the house – if I add tinsel do you think it will pass as decorations?! 🙂

Me and half the children are dressed – just need to track down the other half of the children and get her dressed too. Have managed to be detective and track down a pub described using directions in an area I am totally unfamiliar with using the wrong name for the pub – book a table there for dinner and get my Mum’s grudging agreement to babysit so we can go out for a meal with Miranda who is down visiting her parents for Christmas – be nice to see her anyway and she is my best chance of employment too!

And it’s not even midday 🙂

Ady should be home soon to transport us over to Ros’ for carolling and Christmassing – looking forward to that lots 🙂

See, nothing to this housewifeliness 😉

Listened to that 13 times in the car today 🙂

For the first time in several weeks the phone has not rung with anyone chasing money and the post brought nothing but Christmas cards and the vouchers for my shiny new laptop which I will be heading out to purchase as soon as Ady arrives home. 🙂

I have spent ages on the phone today though, just as we were leaving the house I had a phonecall from a woman I used to work with years ago. She’s about 60, completely loony, northern and exactly what I would like to be like when I grow up! Spent about an hour on the phone with her catching up on gossip, throwing insults at each other, bitching about people we both know and debating the pros and cons of men and rabbits! Apparantly all she wants for Christmas is a rich and ailing old man to marry! 😉 She told me not to be so bloody stupid about HE and to send ’em off to school so I can drink wine all day and watch daytime TV – and on a bad day she probably has a point! 😉

Headed over to Chris and Julie’s for an Activeo session held there with two other families aswell. The children headed off into the throng and I sat around chatting with Chris and the other two mothers who came. One was the woman who’s little boy always dresses as a girl – she’s lovely as are her children but she is so funny about labelling them and then discussing them at length infront of them. She was debating taking a council flat in a tower block today and saying ‘well it might be awful with all the homophobic beatings that D would be subject to!’. Mind you I suspect if one of my children had quite such an obvious trait I would be inclined to harp on about it all the time before anyone else could too! It was nice to be there with HE folk again though in a group and made me more determined that in the new year I will get more involved in Activeo and try and bring it more over to West Sussex. WAG was obviously not the right thing but Activeo is fairly alternative with lots of automous educators and I notice several new members from Worthing joined when WAG finished so if I organise a couple of events over this way hopefully we can grow that arm of it – all of the socialising and contact making with none of the responsibiilty – result! 🙂

While we were there the children played outside for about an hour, Davies had looked out of our window this morning and seen ice on the sandpit which has no sand and is full of water and wanted to and explore it but I’d said no. So he was delighted to discover ice on the sandpit lid over there and do lots of science-y type stuff with it including smashing it to pieces! So they got lots of fresh air and exercise, plenty of socialising and free – ooh how I ticked those boxes ;-).

Came home via four stops to drop off the last of the deliver by hand Christmas cards – I have two left here now – one for Ros and one for some friends who live the other way which I will probably deliver on the way to Ros’ tomorrow. Listened to Frosty the Snowman another 8 times, I think all three of us know all the words to that now!

Ady has rung me about 20 times today as he was out doing the very last of the Christmas shopping as he was doing Lakeside B&Q today – for anyone who does not know Lakeside is the shopping mecca of the South probably – it’s just the northern side of the Dartford Tunnel and is the destination of many an Essex lottery winner ;-), so was able to brave Argos, ELC and Toys R Us on my behalf :-). He managed to totally finish all our Christmas shopping which is – with the exception of the year I had Tarly when I was organised for Christmas by October in preparation for birthin’ in December – the most organised and stressfree it’s ever been – hurrah for being poor! 😉

As soon as Ady arrived home I headed off to PCWorld to redeem the insurance vouchers which arrived this morning and this blog post is brought to you with my new shiny, so small and pocket sized it looks like something Ros would have laptop :-). Love it! And no it’s not an ibook – I decided I was not in the mood to be learning new operating systems and all and it has been very straightforward to set up – it asked me whether I wanted to connect to the wireless connection it detected and the most arduous task has been copying across the address book from the laptop – which has necessitated a further cull! 😉

Arrived home with my pretty little box to find my mother here making sarcastic comments about how my lifestyle hasn’t changed much considering our new financially challenged state – WTF!!! – shortly replaced by our friend Bruce who had brought over some pressies for the children.

Job list for the week is going well – mince pies to be made tomorrow before heading over to Ros’ for mince pies and carols 🙂 Present wrapping in the evening and then we have two days at home to do present and card making / abusive mother yelling at children to leave me the hell alone while I play with my new laptop!!

if you are looking for any relevance in that title you will be looking awhile! I do like them though, filled with cream. I quite like the squirty cream laced with alcohol that you can get nowadays. They are something we buy without fail every Christmas, in the Davies tradition that my parents always bought them too. And continuing the Davies tradition they kick around and almost always end up being the dessert on my birthday (so yes, I will be bringing some to make an exotic dessert based around brandy snaps! 😉 ) but other than that there is no relevance to my title!

A good day / bad day sort of day today, so I’ll do bad day stuff first (day is an anagram of Ady you know and when slightly inebriated I am inclined to move my fingers in the ady direction rather than the day one first!).

Bad stuff – shouted lots again today. I really tried not to but I didn’t manage it. Did offer plenty of cuddles and love too so I guess it was balanced.

Spent £40 at the dentist – however this also falls under the good day stuff so we’ll talk more about that then.

Fell over while carrying Scarlett – hurt my right ankle (quite a lot actually!) and my left knee and Tarly bumped her head. She recovered very quickly and fortunately no one witnessed it except Davies (unlike when I did the same stunt with her when she was 2 days old and it was seen by an entire bus queue!)

Tarly fell asleep at 4.30pm, slept til 8pm ish and is currently still dashing up and down the hallway 🙁

Electric monthly payment has increased from £25 to £67 which is a bit scary!

Good stuff 🙂

Posted the cards for abroad and delivered the local ones with the children this morning.

Made my parents Christmas card and it is charmingly Home Made 😉

Dentist is a new dentist, having left our previous private very pretty waiting room with oak sideboards and classical music cos we can’t afford it anymore we’ve registed with the NHS dentist across the road. We’ve cancelled our medical insurance at £50 a month and today’s bill, which is all there will be for a further six months was under £40 for all four of us – which can’t be bad 🙂

We lifted the midweek alcohol ban what with it being Christmas week and all and so I am very pleasantly merry and at peace with the whole wide world!

Get present for Jack – Ady should be doing so tomorrow

Get last pressie for Tarly – might do that later today

Get last pressie for Davies – Ady should do that tomorrow

Post cards to NZ and Ireland – probably missed NZ deadline already but will attempt to get them sent today

Hand deliver cards to neighbours and nearby friends – another task for today hopefully

Car deliver any remaining local cards – could do on the way to Julie’s tomorrow

Make cards for Mum & Dad, Frazer, Ady, Davies, Scarlett.

Get children to make cards for each other, Ady, Mum & Dad and Frazer.

Consider making some sort of gifts for parents, brother, Ady from children (sweets in home made boxes? Framed picture in customised frame?)

Last pressie for Ady – maybe later today, if not tomorrow

Make mince pies – some for Wednesday and then some more for the weekend – Wednesday ones make Wednesday morning, weekend ones make on Friday when at home being last minute festive is on my schedule!

Wrap pressies – should do children’s tonight (maybe!).

Thank you notes to thank you neighbour for Tarly’s birthday pressies – hoping the thank you for the thank you chain of events might get missed in the flurry of tinsel that is Christmas, but ever mindful that there will probably be something from them at Christmas for the children which will start the whole chain off again!

Open fire crackling and roaring, full tummy of roast dinner, second glass of wine having heart warming and softening effects, lights twinkling on the tree and a long and world put back on it’s axis chat.

I’ve wrapped some presents and am enjoying a box of liqueurs.

Pre Christmas Christmas over at my parents today.

It was a crap night last night, Davies woke about an hour after I went to sleep crying with pain about his ear hurting (cue guilt attack about taking him to noisy concert and standing a bit near the speakers for a short time) so he ended up being calpoled and coming into bed with me, Ady went into his bed, and then Tarly woke at about 5am and stood at the bottom of the stairs yelling for Ady for about 20 minutes being ignored!

I went and shouted at her to go back to bed, she shouted back that she didn’t want me, she wanted Daddy and her milk so I went back to bed. Ady eventually did get up and so we had a row about him giving in to her too much as I flatly refuse to get up with them before 6am unless they are ill – if he wants to then he can!

Dad came over to go logging with Ady so I made some mince pies with Scarlett while they were gone and then shot off to get the week’s food shopping from Co-op in further cost cutting mindset. It probably was cheaper but I bought a few Christmas related bits and pieces so it came in just on budget.

Back home to unload the shopping, attempt to get the children dressed, rescue some washing that I had turned to tumble dry thinking it was the washing I had left in there only to discover it was actually a new load that Ady had washed and was not suitable for tumble drying, wrap my Granny’s Christmas present and generally slam about the house, yelling at the children, plotting to leave Ady and run away from home to Mexico without telling anyone!

We arrived at Quinta (which is my parents house and I am going to start refering to it as on here as it is far easier to say than Mum and Dad’s all the time) a mere hour late! Had lunch, sat around while Dad, Ady and Frazer watched football, Granny played with the children and Mum put the decorations up in a very half hearted manner. Sometimes Mum is excellent with Scarlett and other times it is just so obvious she favours Davies it is uncomfortable to watch – today was one of those days. 🙁 Everything Scarlett did caused a sigh or rolled eyes and she was quite sharp with her a couple of times. Having been pretty sharp with the world and it’s wife myself the last couple of weeks I didn’t feel in the right to say anything so I just kept out of the way really. On the way in Davies and I spent a few minutes looking at Dad’s pond which had a layer of ice on one half. We talked about why (one of the areas has a pump with a waterfall so the water has a fair bit of movement, the other side is mostly still, also the sun was shining more on one side due to shadows from the trees) and dipped our feet onto the ice to see if it floated and how thick it was.

Children are now both asleep, Ady (poor downtrodden Ady) is cooking dinner and I’m about open a bottle of festive cheer and start wrapping the children’s Christmas presents so I can make a list of anything still to sort out / get this week and feel like I have myself organised. Very odd feeling not buying any presents for my family due to not having any money – for a while I felt quite relieved, now it just feels a bit hoilow.

The perfect gentleman!

He almost fell asleep on my shoulder, perked up immeasurably for the price of a cornetto, came down the front to dance with me near the stage, held my hand in public and chatted to me all the way home. 🙂 He also totally unprompted told me that some words on a recycling bin said ‘No’ and ‘Glass’ while we were queuing to get in. Apparantly he’d looked at the letters and spelt them out – he didn’t actually realise that that was what reading meant! 😉

The concert was at The Assembly Hall in Worthing – a venue I frequented fairly often in my youth. I did at least two carol concerts and one other choir performance there with the school as a child, it was the venue for roller discos where we used to skate round in a big circle, in the dark with disco lights listening to Wham! and I went there for a Christmas party when I was about 17 which was ticket only organised by my sixth form college where I drank snowballs all night! Ah, happy memories!

I shared all of these with Davies while we were waiting for Shaky to take the stage – not at all sure how interested he was really, but the couple infront of me were quite clearly listening and seemed fairly enthralled! 😉

Weird old collection of people there tonight. I hadn’t previously realised what a high percentage of Shakin’ Steven’s fan base had special needs! They were all there tonight, the aisles were lined with wheelchairs, there were all the wannabe Shaky’s with their sad combover quiffs and their shoestring ties with collar tips on their shirts, there were the Fleetwood Mac style ladies caught in the 80s in their flouncy skirts and bubble permed hair, the denim era Shaky fans with their stonewashed jeans, jean shirts, jean jackets, white trainers and studded patterns on the back of their jackets spelling out ‘S H A K Y’. There were a smattering of people who had been lured there by watching him on ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ and then the hard core die hard fans who clearly run Shaky tribute websites in their spare time, feel like they know him personally on the strength of a signed poster from the fan club and were wearing hand customised clothing to show their love. Frankly it was like a bad day on 5p listing on Ebay exhibition! 😉

I felt slightly embarrassed actually when Shaky – who’s age I believe is officially undisclosed but has gotta be over 50 was up there giving it some pelvic thrusts to You Drive Me Crazy. FFS I adored him when I was about 8 so I cannot possibly see him in any sort of sexual way without feeling all shy and blushing!

Anyway, Davies did really well. He was starting to doze off just before the interval (no mean feat given it was probably the loudest concert I’d ever been to) but perked up as the lights came up at the propect of ice cream. During the second half when all the woman of a certain age wearing sequins stood up to dance and clap their hands above their heads thus rendering all of those seated behind them unable to see anything other than their gyrating arses, creating a mexican wave effect of others standing up until there were just the odd reluctant pockets of people still sitting down, watching the arses of those infront of them and half heartedly tapping their feet (aside from the wheelchair bound of course – even Shaky couldn’t perform that sort of magic!), we decided to venture down the front too – so we saw This Old House within spitting distance of the man himself. We then moved back slightly to watch the grand finale of Merry Christmas Everyone. Davies had wanted to go home about 10 minutes before the end but we were both glad we’d hung it out really.

For me, all comedy value of Shakin Stevens playing the Assembly Hall in Worthing some 20 odd years after I had his poster on my bedroom wall aside there was a real magic in standing close to the stage, my own child resting on my hip with his cheek next to mine, a week before Christmas Eve listening to him singing Merry Christmas Everyone. We’d been commenting earlier – as it is actually quite traditional to do as an adult – that it didn’t feel like Christmas yet – well this, coupled with coming home to watch When Harry Met Sally – my all time favourite film and a very Christmassy one to boot, I am feeling pleasantly filled with the festive spirit now. 🙂

In other news today we whizzed round a couple of Ady’s friends (and mine too I guess) delivering Christmas cards with the usual promise of getting together in the New Year being trotted out and exclaimations made at how D & S have grown! We then spent the afternoon at Chris and Julies, drinking spiced apple juice and catching up on the last couple of weeks. Julie also was on a Christmas crafts roll and had some beeswax sheets and wicks to make rolling candles and some slabs of silver birch which Chris drilled holes in and the children decorated with connifer clippings, red berries, gold leaves and red feathers to make candle holders. Very pretty and an excellent idea for presents for the grandparents! 😉

Tomorrow we are over at Mum and Dads as my Granny is flying out to America for Christmas on Wednesday. She has friends who live near Hollywood and more often than not ends up going there for Christmas. Ady is going chopping logs with Dad in the morning to stock up for the next couple of weeks firewood and I’m planning to bake some mince pies with the children while they’re gone before heading over to my parents at lunchtime.

Next week is already pretty much filled up with various pre Christmas get togethers with friends and sitting here with the fire slowly dying, the tree lights twinkling, the tinsel catching the last of the fires flickers and reflecting the light around the room I can still hear the echoes of Shaky in my ears and I am finally feeling quite excited that in one week and five minutes time sleigh bells will be jingling far up in the night skies.

Tis the season of love and understanding, Merry Christmas Everyone xxx

I’ve had the verdict from the insurance company about my ill fated laptop. I’ve been offered £900 worth of PC World vouchers to replace it.

They’ve recommended a HP one as the same spec wise or I can go and choose a different one if I wish.

Have no extra money to put towards it, obviously 😉

Was wondering about a mac but I do use MS Word quite a bit – the CV work has to be in that format so I need to have it really. I use my current laptop for storing pictures on although I could use the PC for that instead, it obviously needs to pick up the wireless connection at home or away and blue tooth would be nice. My current laptop is fairly large which was fine at the time of purchase but a smaller one would be nice I think.

Anything to avoid / particularly look for would be much appreciated advice 🙂

Just wanted to come back to the fact that by this time tomorrow I will have been in the same room as Shakin Stevens briefly.

When I was a little girl he was my first case of hero worship. I had two Shakin Stevens cassettes which I played over and over again, rewinding and replaying each line then writing it down until I had the lyrics to every song. I remember watching Jim’ll Fix It when they had three kids on there dancing with Shaky to This Old House and wishing so hard that it hadn’t already been on there because now there was no chance of me writing in and asking for the same thing and it happening again. I had a life sized posted on my wall of him which I used to clamber up the bookcase every night to offer a goodnight kiss to. The bit of poster round his nose and mouth wore away in the end!

For quite some while I was convinced that Elvis was actually a Shaky impersonator 😀

Anyway, tomorrow night I’ll be there, in the front row, with my small child in tow, singing along with him for all we’re worth and loving every minute of it!

I *think* I caught up on some sleep last night – I know I was in bed before 10.30 and I know I didn’t actually get downstairs this morning til 9am, but I am also pretty sure I was up at least twice in the night to Scarlett and I don’t feel particularly refreshed and revived. I do feel the best I’ve felt in a couple of weeks though so I’m hopeful I am finally out of the other side of the GirlFlu.

So first thing before I even switched the computer on I had a hissy fit about the state of the house generally. The Christmas decorations felt like they were simply drawing attention to the mess and clutter rather than being all festive and cheery so I went into the playroom, dragged everything out of the cupboards and off the surfaces and then tidied it all away again. I would imagine that Ady has already filled the cleared surfaces again having been home for nearly 3 hours but for a brief time it looked quite crisp! I also cleared and chucked in the recycling a fair amount of stuff from the lounge although it still needs further sorting. I think as Ady is off work between Christmas and New Year and we have no particular place to be with no money to spend there if we went we might well do a sort of grand house tidy really. There will be (admittedly smaller than usual but still here just the same) new piles of plastic to find homes for and we have plans to redecorate at least two of the rooms early in the new year (lounge and Davies’ bedroom – we already have the paint) so that would be a good time to blitz the whole house really.

Anyway I felt fairly industrious and worthy about doing a good hour and a half housework and also making a small but definite inroad into the laundry mountain threatening to eat us in the night, so that was good. Davies still has no clean long pjs though, so I think a Davies pj wash must be tomorrows priority ;-).

The children did lots of TV ed while all this was going on, Scarlett came in and ‘helped’ me tidy for a while which was probably more of a hindrance if I’m honest ;-). She did do a good job of at least moving stuff from one room to another when directed though, even if I then had to go into each room and sort them afterwards. Davies played with the geomags and made all sorts of things – I really like the geomags actually, they both play with them for ages, learn all sorts of things accidentally about shapes, magnets and so on and are forced to be quite imaginative when limited to straight line shapes. Tarly made me a necklace with two different ‘charms’ to hang from it, a diamond and a triangle, and then demonstrated how I could change them whenever I wanted and how the ‘necklace’ undid at the back. Which for some reason put me in mind of a present I had bought with birthday money one year which was a watch with 7 different coloured plastic circles to change it to match whatever you were wearing – I *loved* that watch!

I had intended to walk along with the children to the post office next – I’ve got a couple of Christmas cards to post to Ireland and New Zealand (have prob missed the NZ deadline actually) but as they were not dressed and were not really interested in going I decided we’d do it tomorrow instead so had my half hour online time while they tidied up the geomags under my direction!

Lucy then surprised me by arriving about 15 minutes earlier than planned. I am so used to all my friends being late for everything I tend to allow half an hour after the stated time before I even attempt to shove stuff under the sofa in preparation for them arriving! 😉 We had a really nice couple of hours with them although I ended up sending Davies upstairs to his bedroom to play for a bit. Rebecca is 3 in March so Tarly is her obvious playmate and indeed with Davies out of the way (he was playing with Scarlett in one of their noisier games which simply scared Rebecca off from playing with them at all, made them both fairly boisterous and was drowing out me and Lucy trying to talk) the two of them went off to Tarly’s room to play with the dolls, the dressing table and glittery make up and be thoroughly girlie! Not something I’d normally do and indeed one of the things I usually celebrate is that they don’t tend towards their stereotypical obvious friends, but I thought Davies had done pretty well for friendship and socialising at Okehampton where Tarly had maybe missed out a little so it was nice to see her really enjoying playing with another little girl in a way she rarely gets to do. Davies was actually far happier playing alone with his castle and micro machines for a while uninterupted by Scarlett in the end so it was a bit of a win:win as it turned out.

Lucy had her usual saved up load of questions – I feel like her guru! 😉 She took away a couple of books I had on parenting with more than one child and sibling relationships and we talked through a few things about that and feelings about not having as much time as before for the older child and at the same time worrying that the younger one never gets that individual time and attention. All of those frets which I’d pretty much forgotten I’d ever had but I know I spent lots of time thinking about when Tarly was small. Also had further chats about HE. She is feeling very much at crunch time and getting pressure from other friends and family to get Rebecca at nursery in the new year. She is very convinced by HE but not confident enough to feel she could convince others so she’s planning to join EO and a couple of the local groups in the new year to meet more people doing it so she doesn’t get accused of doing it on the basis of only knowing me – which in fairness would be quite accurate atm as she’d never heard of it before we got back in contact again although it did answer lots of her questions when she did hear about it. I’ve directed her at the blogring too so she can see that other ‘almost normal’ people do it too!

Anyway, they left and we had a post visitors and pre visitors tidy up then we sat and read some library books together I’d found in my earlier tidying frenzy and then finally got round to reading some of the books in the advent calendar with books. So we did some number spotting, read the first seven books and chatted about them (they are just miniature books with 3 pages each, so far we’ve met Scrooge and learnt a bit about him) and then hung those on the Christmas tree – which look good as it was a little bare now most of the chocolate decorations have been swiped off it and I’ve still not got round to making any biscuits to put on it! We should catch up to tomorrow’s date with it tomorrow and then I’m pretty sure we’ve got a dvd somewhere with some version of the story on it which I can see being a hit with Davies at least.

Mel, Liam and Lily arrived as we found book 8. Mel and I managed a fair bit of catching up while the boys went upstairs and played and Scarlett introduced Lily to the joys of her dressing table and glitter make up and painted nails!! So they had some sort of beauty salon going on while the boys were particularly rowdy. They all ate most of their tea and then all leapt all over Ady at once (poor man!) and finally left after a very boisterous game involving all of them and most of the contents of the dressing up box around 7pm.

Both of our two are now in bed fast asleep, all socialled out! I’ve been fairly impatient and shouty at the children inbetween visitors today, Davies in particular has been doing attention seeking silly tricks and then getting yelled at. I’m quite happy to put it all down to tiredness, illness and general ‘stuff’ but I’d still really rather not have him showing out and me reacting badly. Tomorrow night we are off to see Shakin Stevens just the two of us so that should help to get us back on track again. Funny how I never feel the need to rebalance my relationship with Tarly – she’s so much more resiliant about being told off! 😉

By the rather good Spin Doctors. Of which even a very good one would have had difficulty finding the highlights of today from, but never mind. Onwards and upwards and all that.

Yesterday was fantastic, we had a really lovely day. It was festive, beautiful, fun and very possibly one of the best days ever. I love you all very much, thank you. 🙂

Scarlett did not go back to sleep last night at all, she spent some time in bed with us which we thought was cute for about an hour top whack. After that we sort of took it in turns to return her to her bed and try not to shout at her. She asked for (read demanded) orange juice which she promptly spilt in her bed and on her pjs. She managed to get a clean nightie out and get changed all by herself and then realised the bed was all damp and stood there hollering 🙁 So I feel fairly zombiefied today through sheer lack of sleep the last two nights and a very long day.

This morning the children played with hama beads for a while, both of them did fairly well on patterns and designs but it degenerated into squabbling as they are both fairly tired and grumpy too and were deciding that whichever board / bead the other one had was the one they could not live another moment without. Sigh. I abandoned them to go and get dressed and they followed me so they could continue arguing about the fort in Davies’ room within my earshot, they paraded round the house after me while I made a couple of Important Phone Calls and I have told them both at least four times each that the sound of their voice is driving me insane today!

On the plus side Davies did some very creative stuff with a print out of the Backyardigans and a cat food cardboard box, some paper, some scissors, some pens and a roll of sellotape. He made a theatre complete with scenery and curtains and put on a show for me and Scarlett which was actually pretty impressive in terms of having a bit of a storyline, some character recognisable distinguishments in voices and the high drama of the five minute curtain calls and the lounge lights being lit and then dimmed. He also did some dot to dot – although me losing my temper as he kept asking me what came after six was a further source of disharmony! He then made a little purple robot for me which was very cute and fired by my praise on that turned himself into a robot by cutting out shapes and sellotaping them to his clothes then walking round the house robot style. He also made me a little remote control so I could make him do stuff – didn’t have a mute though ;-). He’s fast asleep already so I am quite happy to have put it all down to tiredness and hope tomorrow brings a cheerier child.

Scarlett has been very clingy and cuddly, we’ve done some playing with make up, some drawing and some playing with Christmas stampers and ink pads, tried to get her to copy her name but she was having none of it. She got a birthday pressie in the post (thanks Karen B and Emma 🙂 🙂 ) which was played with a fair bit too. She’d also had another late pressie yesterday while we were away of a princess bubble bath and some fairy wings and tiara so that was proudly showcased to me. She was also asleep before 7 and my fingers are firmly crossed that she’ll stay that way for at least the majority of the night.

Tomorrow we have two sets of visitors – Lucy is coming round for lunch with Rebecca and Richard (much photographed baby at Halloween party) and then Mel is coming round with Liam and Lily (also at party, in Skeleton outfit and red devil!) for tea when they finish school. Not really deliberate to have them both on the same day, just the way it panned out but it should at least end the week on a high note :-).

Why I missed my children so much yesterday?

Cos they sure as hell can’t manage to remind me today. Today I would rather be in France, Belgium or perhaps even Margate than be in this house, with these children, making the phonecalls and getting the emails I’ve gotten today. 🙁

We all know they don’t really exist! 😉

and it’s past midnight and therefore is tomorrow now 🙂

Happy Birthday Abbie of Just Another Morning Here 🙂

have a lovely day darling, lots of love from Ady, Nic, Davies & Scarlett xxx

A quickie as Davies was up for most of the night, which meant we were too, which meant the 5am start with Dad arriving at 5.30 and Davies sobbing for me not to leave him was a less than desirable start to the day. Have not seen my daughter awake at all today – she was still asleep when we left at 6am and she was asleep when we got home just before 11pm. I did hear her in the background when I phoned but she refused to speak to me.

Will explore my feelings about my first ever full day away from the children and having been to two other countries without them another time.

We had the best day though. It was just perfect in every way 🙂 Thanks to the six of you for everything. 🙂

Photos uploading to flickr right now, and then I think I might just reaquaint myself with my pillow!

edited to add – both of them have now awoken just long enough to kiss and cuddle me and tell me they love me and they missed me. Am now off for a bath and am hoping they love me just enough to have gone back to sleep ’til the morning!

but I guess I’m autonomous or on Christmas holidays or something – well anyway I can forge my mum’s signature and get a note from her to excuse me on account of being poorly. 🙂

Ady’s been off today using up end of the year holiday days, we’re off to France tomorrow on an adults only trip which we’re really looking forward to – no doubt reports and photos will be available sometime on Thursday. My parents are having the children for the day and Dad will be arriving at about 5.30am tomorrow, so that will be a nice long day for everyone 😉 Actually I am secretly hoping that the children wake up before we leave really otherwise it will be the first time ever I don’t see them all day as it will be almost the next day before we get home again and I sincerely don’t want them to be waiting up!

So today we went into town for a few bits and pieces, the children needed their feet measuring – pleased to report that making them smoke to stunt their growth seems to be working and neither of them need new shoes yet ;-). Also popped in to see my Mum at work which always scores stacks of brownie points as she gets to show off to all her colleagues what a close family we are ;-). Finally I wanted to sort out an upgrade on my mobile phone but the high street shop couldn’t do it, so I’ve done it online instead and my new one should arrive here tomorrow. 🙂

We came home and Davies slumped on the sofa all tired and floppy for most of the rest of the afternoon. I nipped out to the library to take a couple of books back and then we played a few educational online games on my laptop and signed back up for yet another free trial with educationcity. Tarly is excellent with the laptop mouse pad and it was very interesting to watch their different approaches to the matching games – Tarly was very structured in her method and Davies was far more about luck than judgement! Did some of the science stuff on educationcity and Davies was really good at and enjoyed that lots too.

Both children were asleep by 7pm again, tired and worn out although Ady has just rushed into Tarly who has awoken coughing, which is not a Good Thing as we were about to head off to bed ourselves. 🙁