just another morning here

Got back to Exeter around 6pm this evening and it’s lovely to be back. Steve teased Abbie by asking her if Charlie had always been brown so she went dashing upstairs to check he was all right – and he’s still as white as ever. Apparently not all of us were so lucky with our petsitting duties though ;o) !!

Life is back to normal relatively quickly, we got all our washing done at Dad & Lorraine’s over the weekend so came back with cases full of clean clothes instead of dirty ones, which helped enormously. Steve’s farting around on one pc making new themes for his phone with some clever software he’s bought, while I’ve been conned into downloading Yahoo Messenger on the other one – which will be another huge pull to the pc, no doubt!! See what I mean about life being back to normal?! Hey ho though, at least my pc addiction is sociable and keeping up with my mates!

Esther’s baptism was really good, and we had a lovely day together as a family together, only Steve was missing, in fact. The children enjoyed seeing their cousin Caleb again, too. When I can get to the other computer I’ll sort all the pictures out – and the Melrose ones too … but that may well have to wait till tomorrow! Some of them need editing – for some reason there are lots of pics with various parents in the background looking completely exhausted!

It was such a good week, I’m still glowing from it … just can’t get over how lovely it was generally, I can’t even begin to write a list of highlights!

But it was cold, and we didn’t have anything planned for the day, even our music lesson was cancelled because the teacher was ill, so I took the children to Crealy again this morning. We were the only people there for the first hour or so! I got to finish my book, and they ran off loads of energy, which was good all round.

We came home for lunch, the children read books and played, we gave in to a bit of tv, and then Anna & Abbie worked on some more reptile worksheets together, which was nice. I might go and bind all the reptile stuff we’ve done over the past couple of days, it’s amazing how much they’ve absorbed, and produced on paper as well, for once.

The pink dress strikes again – Abbie was just so cute with Charlie this evening, I had to take a photo … she’d put him in her pocket and was having great fun playing hide and seek with him.

the dress has gone in the wash now, I hope Fran’s taking hers next week because Abbie wants to wear hers at the same time …

Well, Christmas didn’t start too well here – we had the worst night we have had for years! Josiah had a raging temperature and was feverishly bright at 2am, 3am, Abbie woke at 4am because of all the disruption (she went back to bed really well, in her defense) then Joe woke again after that, having wet the bed. Charlie was obliviously running round in his wheel making a racket so none of us went back to sleep easily after each waking. So at 7.30am when Anna came down the rest of us were somewhat bleary eyed!

Anyway we’ve had a nice day … stockings and family pressies at home before going to church. We were really proud of Anna because she took part in the service and read a prayer (that she’d thoughtfully written herself) really clearly. After that we went over to Steve’s parents’ for the rest of the day. Josiah was still running a really high temperature and slept through church, went back to bed at Grandma & Grandpa’s, for nearly the whole afternoon. He finally surfaced around 5pm with the help of a bit of Calpol, and then really enjoyed opening his presents, and playing with them afterwards.

Grandma had made some fantastic treasure hunts for the children with rhyming clues, to help them find their first presents which were all lovely games to play while dinner was cooking, and the girls absolutely loved them. Anna has finally admitted that she knows Santa is really us, but she was happy to agree to keep the secret going for the little ones.

Here we all are about to have dinner:

And this is a little photo of Charlie from last night when Abbie got him out on the table for the first time and let him have a run around.


Off to try out some of our new PS2 toys now – Steve and I both bought each other games so we’ll be fighting for screentime!

My family have been sitting in front of the tv all afternoon, how shocking is that? In my defense, I’ve wrapped pressies, made lunch, and folded washing while they’ve been there. Joe and Abbie are playing lego together as well leaving the true telly addict (Anna) as the definite winner of the ‘Who can watch the most TV in one day’ contest. Steve’s slept off some of last night’s overindulgence so now it’s just a case of killing time and cooking tea before we can do bath and bedtime activities. The kids are chuffed to bits because Steve has a week off now, and they’re really thrilled to have him home.

Abbie bought Charlie a christmas treat in the pet shop this morning, some little strawberry drop things, so she’s going to try giving him one tonight.

Oh, and I keep forgetting to say, Josiah decided a few days ago that he was grown up enough to sleep a whole night without a nappy on, and so far so good, we’ve had 3 dry nights from him. What a star!