Her name was LOLA, she was a Snow Girl!!

Well as you can imagine, the best laid plans were totally sideswiped by the massive snow dump we had in the South of England here yesterday…… I am still here and should be in Glasgow visiting my ill mother and poor exhausted father. However the thought of driving 400 miles in those conditions yesterday or today don’t fill me with a lot of joy! I am so glad we made the decision to stay put.

Last night my friend Jacqueline and her husband Paul arrived with their son and two dogs after a marathon nine and a half hour car journey from just up the road in Bedfordshire! I knew they were making a journey to Watford yesterday and I casually suggested they might want to drop in here afterwards and have dinner and stay the night. So they shoved the dogs in the car with everyone else and we are all jolly glad they did. When they finally arrive last night after their journey they were exhausted and starving!!  Just in time for the Strictly Come Dancing Final……(can’t believe Pamela Stevenson didn’t win…..) and some dinner that had been sitting in the Hostess Trolley (yes I do own one of them, and they are the best thing ever, so don’t knock it till you’ve tried it as they say) for a couple of hours……

Why do we always lose the plot in the UK when the weather gets bad? It happens every year and we always get caught out?  Well at least it’s the holidays and I don’t have to wrestle the kids into weather appropriate clothing for the walk to school tomorrow. Fliss was really upset yesterday when I told her she couldn’t go out and make a snowman in her Tinkerbell costume and clippy cloppy sandals….. Seriously, you should have seen her. She agreed to make a concession by putting a t-shirt on underneath the Tinkerbell outfit at one point and I was getting so annoyed that we were getting danger close to me actually letting leave the house like that, just to see her face as she ran back into the house after about 30 seconds when she realised just how blooming cold it was!!!!!!!!

When she eventually did leave the house, the snow was so deep that it was coming in over the top of her wellies and she stood in the middle of the street and screamed her head off while I was frantically trying to scrape enormous clods of snow from Lola who resembled a small Yeti and was having difficulty moving as the frozen snow had rendered her little legs useless!!!!!!

After that I went back into the house and opened a bottle of wine………….

Testing Testing………

This is one of the funniest things……. Andy has been saying for years that we  should own a lap top and I have resisted, resisted, resisted and now here I am, on my delicious new red laptop, testing out the photo thingy bobbery and really wishing I’d bought one sooner!!!

This is Fliss on her 4th birthday trying out her Minnie ears!!! I have a daughter who is bizarrely addicted to the whole Disney phenomenon where my eldest daughter Cecilie, was never really interested. I might have been that whilst poor wee Cecilie was going through these formative years, we lived in Germany and Cyprus (yes Cyprus, and you know who you are!!) and only had two tv channels with the BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Services) system and has therefore been ridiculously deprived……..poor baby!

My darling husband has just asked me how my day was and I’ve just been keeping him abreast of the days events, you know how it goes…….. fight with kids to get them into clothes, clean breakfast from clothes, fight with children to make them brush hair and teeth, school run with insane dog who wants to chase squirrels but keeps strangling herself on her lead, forgetting handmade bloody Christmas presents for the teacher and teaching assistant and having to go home for them as 6 year old is heart-broken and won’t accept them arriving at home time…….. aaaaaaaaagh!!!

However one thing I didn’t expect today was my H & M experience when the twenty-something father in front of me in the queue decided to give me and the woman behind me the biggest (and hairiest) flash of builders bum I’ve ever had the misfortune to see………… I actually felt a bit violated………..I didn’t know where to look!!!!!!!!!! And I’m pretty broad-minded let me tell you….. and not averse to the odd flash of attractive male flesh!!

I’m fine now, I find that “a glass of wine solves everything”!!!!!!!!

Cloudy with a Chance of Rolling Pin!

Last year's Christmas Beach view!!

Well, I thought I'd never actualy get the time or the inclination to add to this blog ever again last week. What a horrible week. I was under the "Black Cloud" last week (some of you ladies will understand what I'm referring to....) and I just hated everybody!!!! The kids came in for some serious verbal sparring and  I had the overwhelming desire to bludgeon my hubbie with a rolling pin!

The the weekend came and it improved somewhat.......well sort of. It was actually quite good fun but involved lots of drinking and partying and staying up late in general........ it's not quite so easy at my age I'm afraid!! There was some rolling pin action, but it was only for rolling out the pastry for the mince pies!

On Saturday my friend Jacqueline came with her family for an overnight and we got the raclette grill out which was fun. We hadn't done raclette since Germany  but it's such a sociable way to eat and it's such an easy way to entertain - just get your guests to cook their own dinner!!!  What a winner!! The only problem with Raclette though is the amount of wine you absent-mindedly consume whilst chatting and cooking your dinner!!!

We took the kids to the Christingle service at church on Sunday and it was beautiful.....and it's always amusing to watch the little kids trying to hold their Christingles and not set anyone alight!!!  Bless.  Afterwards we all went back to my neighbours house for Gluwein and curry and it was a lovely way to finish off the weekend................. that and the results show for Strictly Come Dancing which I'm actually quite addicted to. I have no idea who'll win, but I do like Matt from Countryfile. He's very easy on the eye!!!

Today I sewed Christmas stockings and baked cupcakes for Cecilie's Christmas party. It felt very festive and the kids loved it! We personalised some of them with the embroidery machine and Cecilie sewed a little one for the Classroom Bear with his name on it! His name  is Fuzz and the kids take it in turns to take him home for the night and photograph him doing stuff at their houses and they all have to write in the diary about what he did. I used to dread it as I always ended up doing it myself, however Cecilie does it all herself now and it's comical, so I don't mind now when Fuzz appears in her schoolbag!!!

We are supposed to be driving North on Saturday to see my mum in Glasgow but we will have to watch this space as far as the weather is concerned. It's supposed to snow etc..... At least the black cloud over me this week will just be snow or rain!!!!