4 broken baubles,
3 dodgy lightbulbs,
2 manic children,
and a load of deccies on the christmas tree!

The tree is up and so christmas time has officially arrived at our
house heralding in a frenzy of excitement which will build and build
over the next 9 days. I now have to watch the tree like a hawk to stop
Toby from a) trying to climb it, b) chewing the non-edible decorations,
and c) eating the chocolate decorations with the foil still on.

We had
fun and games putting it up too. We put it in the spot it always
occupies but Toby threw a wobbly as this meant moving his lego stacking
table. Then we put the table back, moved one of the sofas and relocated
the tree to the howls of another melt down. Still, as they say third
time lucky and as it turns out we ended up wondering why we’d not
thought of putting the tree in this corner in the first place!

We had a bit of good new yesterday from Mum – the halo has been taken off! Hooray!! Although she still has to wear a rigid plastic high collar for the next 3 weeks and is finding it very uncomfortable to talk and eat. But at least it’s all progressing well and she’ll soon be able to graduate to a soft collar for support which will really improve things for her.

Winter has arrived here with frosty mornings and we’ve had a busy few days. At the weekend we went to visit Mum who is still soldiering on valiantly with the halo brace. We’re all hoping that it will be off before Christmas while at the same time trying to keep in mind that it will come off when it’s job is fully done. Hopefully Mum will know one way or another at the end of the week. Thanks again for all the continuing good wishes for her, I know she is really grateful for them all.

Thanks too for all of the lovely comments about my paintings. It’s funny really as it seems like a different lifetime but then I think many of us feel that way about life before and life after children! I’m hoping to take some pictures of the rest of my portfolio of work and put them on flickr. If you wanted to see the ‘storm in a teacup’ nude picture it’s on there!

And now I’m off to make myself a new scarf seeing as I’ve managed to loose the lovely snuggly big wool red one that I made a few weeks back. And just at the time when I need it most! Feeling a bit peeved with myself!