Happy New Year...

Half way through January already and I have finally found time to to a bit of blogging on my own site. The snow is finally, after 4 weeks, melting and the trench I trudged through to get to the birds is rapidly turning to a slippery ice causeway. I have a feeling though that any respite from the white stuff will be short-lived for us. Our usual snow season is February/March so just enough time to get this shifted before the next lot.

Christmas was brilliant and we more than made up for last year's debacle of sickness and hospitals and the like. We had Christmas stuff on every weekend from 28th November right up to the main event. Scrumpy was in her element and thankfully no more seizures than usual to break the fun momentum.

We went to a local castle and made biscuits with Mrs Clause before winding our way through real secret doorways and passages to find Santa by the fire. Not sure which was the best bit for Scrumpy, seeing Santa or getting to climb up on the proper four poster and cupboard style beds.

We saw the lights switched on in the city and watched the lantern launch which was beautiful. Unfortunately Bear had to go to the loo right at the wrong moment and having done excellent waiting for half an hour missed the main event! Scrumpy loved it though, fireworks and all.

Hot hubs helped out the man himself and filled in as Santa for SOAR and Saturday club parties (he has the right physique after all!!) but Bear saw right through the disguise and whipped his beard off "Boo!"

We went to see the lights on the river islands - and if I can get the photos off my phone I'll post them - 10' Santa in fairy lights and faces on the trees made it quite spectacular.

Bear was singularly unimpressed with the reindeer - because LOOK!! It's ducks and gulls and I LOVE ducks and gulls! We all enjoyed the miniature train ride though, even if we did get frozen bums.

All in all the girls were off for three weeks and a day from school and thanks to all our lovely helpers we did have a lot of fun. The Giggling Farmer let us go sledging on an amazing hill with no water at the bottom for Bear to head for (see cool runnings on FB) and Scrumpy went for another session on Lama Chick's steeper hill (with the water hazard, hence no Bear) so the three man sledge we got the girls for Christmas has seen some serious action.

Tonight the girls are both away to respite for more fun than you can shake a stick at so Hot hubs and I are off to Surfer Girls house for dinner - expect a full report later - but I just hope her cooking is going better than mine. I volunteered to do pudding and was making a baked cheesecake (simple effective and SG's favourite) but some how I managed to put it in the oven and part cook it without having whisked the egg whites ad put them in the mix. How I did this I do not know. So that's a trip to Tesco on the way for a shop one. Not the same at all so I'll have to make her another one. The pseudo cake looks OK though so will be interesting to try it any way, will most likely be brick-like in texture!

In a fit of social whirlwind we also have The Font of All Knowledge and Catheirne coming for tea tomorrow - menu is home grown leek and tattie soup, home grown roast lamb and all the bits, dried fruit jelly and creme fraische. The pudding is in the fridge and looking good so one out of two not bad, just the soup to go tomorrow and hot hubs is of course doing mains. I've done my bit for that, I grew it!