One word? When seven would do…

Would have blogged yesterday but I seem to have had a relapse and feel crap again 🙁 Yesterday I was torn between taking tablets all day and keeping off them so I could drink wine and eat curry with friends who came over last night – I compromised by taking tablets ’til about 4pm, then drinking wine and eating curry – not sure that is a very good plan really!

Saturday then, as I blogged on Friday night she was up when we got home from the ‘party’ so Ady sat up with her and I went to bed. He was up ’til 2am with her so I got up with Davies yesterday morning while they slept in ’til about 9am. Davies and I were making chocolate croissants when my Dad arrived, so we made extra and all ate them together, which was nice. Dad used to pop in all the time before we moved up North and I really missed it while we were gone. He had called round a couple of times in the week but missed me each time (off on one of my tablet induced fits of activity!) so I am glad we were all in this time. We then set off to Drusillas where we have season tickets to see Santa. We were expecting it to be heaving as Drusillas is a pretty popular local venue, it was the Saturday before Christmas and although it was bitterly cold it was not windy or raining so I would have thought it would have been very busy. We pretty much had the place to ourselves 🙂 I will do a bit on the grotto later in a professional capacity but as expected Davies loved it and Tarly was a little cautious. This Santa was quite well set up actually, the ‘elf’ asked the kids names and briefed him so he greeted them by name which was good (last year we went to one who was clearly hard of hearing and called them David and Charlotte, which Davies has never forgotten. Now I know they don’t have run of the mill, called Jack and Chloe type names but really, we were living in Manchester, capital of odd choices, where the best selling alphabet letter for name plate signs in the gift shop where we worked was ‘Z’ so it was not as though the bloke expected everyone to have a ‘normal’ name!), they got a little pressie each (Davies got a giraffe mask and Tarly a cuddly penguin) related to the zoo and we walked briskly round the animals. We did succumb to a train ride as it happened to pull up just as we walked by the platform before a fairly crap and very over priced meal in their restaurant.

A few pics then:

I also had a bash at cutting Tarly a fringe which promptly had gotten lost back in the mess of the rest of her hair, this is the only evidence remaining of it (and that is weak too!)

We then went on to Paradise Park which is on the way home to see the Santa there too. We combined this with a bit of educational stuff by looking round the dinosaur and planet earth displays again – which feels like the kids’ second home as we go there so often! Again, I will do more on the grotto in a bit, but this one had a slightly longer queue. On the way out Ady bought some chocolate and we bumped into an HE friend of Davies’ and his Mummy, who we have not seen in a while despite exhanging lots of emails and who will be coming along to our new group – so it was nice to wish them a Merry Christmas in person 🙂

I guess we could be accused of spoiling the mystique of Father Christmas a little by taking them to two in the same day, or simply just spoiling our children! But we were interested in the whole Grotto thing from a business ideas possibility and the very best judges of them are small children, Davies is pretty switched on anyway as he saw all behind the scenes of Grottos in Manchester and has drawn his own conclusions about the whole Grotto thing. He seems to believe in the concept of Father Christmas and coming round on Christmas Eve with reindeer delivering presents all round the world, but he accepts that Mummy and Daddy buy the presents and that all the various Santas he sees out and about are simply helpers for the real bloke. Tarly – well she just sees a big fat bloke dressed in red who gives out presents so she doesn’t much care above and beyond that 🙂

So the Grotto thing then – probably pretty boring for you all so feel free to skip ahead but I want to blog while it’s all fresh in my mind for my own purposes. At the company we worked for in Manchester we ran very successful Santa’s Grottos two years running as a bolt on part of the business (which was a children’s ride, gift shop, kids parties and toddler groups etc). They ran daily from the first weekend in November to Christmas Eve. The first year we had two seperate Santas operating at once, the second year we had three – which meant a large staff of santas and elves and a lot of co-ordination to ensure children did not realise there were three santas there all at once! We offered various packages to see Santa including a go on the ride, a pressie, a photo (choice of photo gifts including keyrings, fridge magnets etc), enhanced gifts (more pricey) and so on. We organised off peak trips from schools, playgroups, scouts and brownies etc and disabled access times too. It was a massive operation and Ady and I pretty much managed it between us. Miranda wanted to operate a grotto business and the early part of this year was spent putting together various business plans and proposals to various places and conducting meetings to sell the concept to places. Sadly nothing ever came of it, but having visited two grottos this year, both of which would have been done on a sizable budget and have reputations as good grottos we could see plenty of improvement opportunitites in marketing, efficiency, presentation, add on sales, customer satisfaction levels and profitability – all of which make us want to do something about approaching people again for next year. At times like these Ady and I once again wonder what we are doing working for other people when we know we could work so well together as a team doing stuff like this – we’ll see….

Anyway, home again and Davies spent yet another night doing his best not to go to sleep (four late nights in a row makes a very whiny little boy 🙁 ), Bruce and Jean came over and we had our beers and curry (very hot, very nice!) before getting a reasonably early night.

Today we have spent most of the day at my parents and actually had quite a nice day. There is a bit of friction at the moment as we are doing Christmas at our house but we are not having a Christmas dinner – the kids don’t eat it anyway, it means one or both of us spends all morning cooking instead of enjoying being with the children, we don’t have anywhere to sit everyone to eat it anyway and it seems like an unnecessary amount of time and effort spent for something which only lasts 20 minutes, creates loads of washing up and makes everyone feel bloated and sleepy for the rest of the day. Instead we are doing loads of nice buffet type food for everyone to help themselves to throughout the day, which we think will be loads better but my Mum is all disappointed about. She has been asking every week ‘are you really not doing a Christmas dinner then?’ with this little pouty face on her and then today she said ‘ooh, what are we doing Christmas eve?’ Before kids we always went out for a meal with them on Christmas Eve, since kids we always get a takeaway delivered and spent the evening drinking and arranging the kids presents round the tree, leaving ‘evidence’ of Santa and Rudolph coming and feeling festive. ‘Because lots of people I know are having their Christmas dinner in the evening on Christmas Eve this year – isn’t that a great idea?’ she asked…..Cheeky mare! We established that no, we would be doing our usual takeaway and laying out of pressies (cos actually Christmas Eve is probably an even crappier time to be spending providing a full roast dinner for people when we have two overexcited children to wrestle into bed to sleep, pressies to dig out of every corner and crevice and cupboard and so on… I sincerely hope she has finally got the message now, Ady did offer to get her a Birds Eye turkey dinner microwave meal for one if she wants 🙂

So that was the weekend. Ady is cooking roast lamb and I am planning a bath and another early night – no wine 🙂

This week we are sort of busy – tomorrow we have Mel. L & L coming for lunch, Tuesday morning Rachel, E & A are coming over, Wednesday I really do want to try and get to Roslyn’s (if it’s still happening – will email you Ros), Thursday Chris and Julie and the twins are coming over and Ady has his scan in the afternoon and Friday we are planning to go out for breakfast with the kids as a treat and Ady wants to finish work by midday. I really want to get the playroom and the kids rooms tidied up. We took some toys over to my parents today which still get played with but take up loads of space and I know I can clear out a few more so that the Christmas pressies will fit into the house once they’ve been unwrapped! I have a mountain of washing to wade through, I need to make some mince pies and I have three assessments I want to complete on my online course before they shut down for two weeks over Christmas.

And finally…. a massive thanks to Jax for getting my archives across from my old blog. I am overjoyed that I will never have to visit blogger again 🙂