just another morning here

Time to make way for New Year! We took the tree down today and I must say I wondered why I’d bothered to put it up, since we had hardly anything underneath it anyway! Still, it was sparkly, I suppose.

We’ve done Not Very Much this week, some shopping in town, a lot of lazing around (definitely turned into a teenager house as we’ve only managed to be up by 10am on the one day I had a friend coming over!), eating, playing games, but it’s all been good.

Anyway, realised that I’d forgotten to blog this vid while it was still in season, but better late than never, a montage of the kids’ Christmas music this year, only the choir stuff unfortunately missing.

So the only debate for tonight is: twenty-ten or two thousand and ten? I’m using both at the moment! Whichever it is, I hope your celebrations tonight are fun and that the year ahead is filled with good things, challenges, excitement, and geocaches

Actually didn’t spend all of NYD playing AC (that would be too much even for me) but instead at Steve’s parents. Had a very pleasant day, ate far too much, and exchanged gifts. They gave me a lovely signed, framed Simon Drew print, and got us all tickets for the panto tonight, cool.

Am currently waiting for children to get ready to go out. Legend has it that they all want to go into town but they are not exactly rushing, yawn! Think I am going to have to do a Sally-style ‘practice getting up at school time’ in the next couple of days!

We had a fantastic mini-break on the Isle of Wight, staying at the Orchards (lovely site, I’d recommend it) along with our friends Stuart & Liz and their girls.

I must confess that although we had intended to camp, we ended up in a static caravan after all – only because Steve sold our Alpina (with the towbar on it) on the weekend before Christmas and it turned out to be just as easy to upgrade to a static as to sort out another tow car! Still, it was nice to have that little bit more space for the holiday, let’s not mention how disappointed we all were to see the Alpina go!

Our first full day dawned bright and sunny, perfect for a Winter Walk

Afterwards we went our separate ways, and our family ended up in Newport’s Pizza Express for lunch, which was really nice, we like Pizza Express.

Later we hit the shops for a little bit of sales shopping; Anna bought herself a lovely 2 part top set, and Steve found a jacket he liked. Then we headed back for a quick swim before tea.

New Year’s Eve saw us almost doing a number of things … we hung around the caravan and went swimming in the morning, then went out and almost walked along to the Needles (but then didn’t due to general lack of enthusiasm), almost visited the Isle of Wight Pearl Centre (then didn’t due to it having closed half an hour before we got there), and then finally ended up at the cinema which was good for us but not so good for the others who’d already seen Enchanted and didn’t fancy Bee Movie.

Still then the evening was fun, we played games, drank wine, and ate nice cheese while waiting to see in the New Year

On New Year’s Day we swam in the morning again, or some of us did at least! Then we went out for lunch together which was great, and followed that with a walk on the beach and the inevitable wasting of 2ps in the arcade on the pier afterwards.

On the day we were leaving we managed to fit in a visit to the Pearl Centre, which was actually pretty good; the children got to see a couple of oysters being opened and pearls found inside, so that was interesting for them.

All in all a lovely few days

I’m usually a bit of a New Year’s humbug, I think it’s over-rated! But this year we decided to give the girls a joint birthday party on New Year’s Eve, so we had to get into the spirit of things a bit

We had a great time actually, a fair bit of girly screaming and overexcitement but not too much – some games, food, and at midnight some raucous dancing to Jools’ Hootenanny. Think they finally went to sleep sometime after 2am although I’m not sure as that’s when I went to sleep!

Thankfully no-one got up too early – the big girls were first at 8am but they came down and played Wii for a while with the door closed, meaning that the younger girls didn’t wake until nearer 9, and Josiah was up sometime after that, even though he went to bed at 9pm the night before! Breakfast was special cereals (ie all the ones they’re not usually allowed to have!), chocolate crepes and waffles with maple syrup

Then they all went home and we were going to go out for a walk but rain has stopped play so we’re just having friends over for New Year’s Day dinner later on.

Happy 2007, folks