Shopping after Christmas

Today I went shopping to spend my Christmas money. I bought a dab radio - I didn't know that that was what I wanted until I saw it half price in Boots. My wife wants me to buy some nice clothes as mine are all a bit worn out. I will do that with the remainder of my Christmas money (though I do still want to buy a larger hard disk for my computer as well...).

Today's link is to a blog of someone that my wife remembers from greenbelt. She has been reading it non-stop since she discovered it. She finds a lot of what he says inspirational and encouraging. It's from the pen of Pip Wilson.

Christmas

Well that's Christmas over for another year! On the whole I enjoyed it.

It all started on Christmas Eve where I was involved doing a reading in the carol service. This is one of those where you still get a real candle to light - love it! It was a section called "Christmas for those who don't feel like celebrating." The theme was the nativity from the viewpoint of the people in the pub after the shepherds had been to see Jesus and each view point led into a prayer. It seemed to go well - though we had lots of creative ideas to make it better but in the end didn't have the time to implement them. When I got home my Wife and children were already there as they had gone to the earlier of two carol services that our church runs (due to numbers). We put the children to bed (one very excited - one a bit poorly), wrapped up a few stocking fillers, ate fine foods, drank some wine and went to bed.

On Christmas day itself our youngest woke up early coughing and I had to give him some cough medicine (he hates medicine and so much of it went over our nice clean bed), our eldest tried to get up a 5:45 but my wife sent her back to bed with a stern word and I supplied her with a torch and a clock so she could wait until 7:00 to get up. At the appointed hour I went down stairs with the children and we opened some small presents in their stockings (mostly sweets)

whilst my wife came to with a cup of tea. We then set to and opened all the presents. The children seemed happy with theirs - though my youngest was very frustrated with the fact that his new Postman Pat wouldn't stand up (He is moulded to sit in his van). I received a lovely scarf.

We then had breakfast and got ready for church - this seemed to take ages and we barely made it on time. But when we got there we were glad we did as it was like being part of a family - something that we haven't felt for a long time at various Christmas services. We were welcomed by friends and there were many excited children (and adults) showing off presents.

Christmas lunch was at my Wife's sister's family's house. The food was lovely (we did the starter:

) and we had a very sociable time - with even more presents! We were going to stay the night but due to our youngest's cold we decided to come home. Though in the end we wished we had stayed as our neighbours were loudly playing games, listening to music and arguing until at least 04:00. My wife got no sleep at all until they quieted down.

Boxing day, and I made a foray into town with my eldest to purchase the game Sims 2 and the Pets expansion pack. she has been trying to play it ever since with frequent frustrated questions being thrown in my direction. (I have had a go on it today to try and see how it works but my namesake in the family my daughter created has been burned to death in a house fire and all the children are dirty and starving and have just missed the bus to school. So perhaps I should have left well alone.) and in the afternoon we had tea at my wife's sister's with them, my wife's father and his new wife. It was quite a pleasant evening with even more presents but, again, we left early as my youngest's cold was getting worse - his face was glistening with mucus!

Today my wife has gone off to visit a friend with our eldest and my youngest are having another lads day in - though today's involves far more mucus than I would like.

Sunday

I am so full! Last night my wife and I went to London to see some old friends for the evening. They live in Paris and were visiting relatives for Christmas and had invited us down to go out for a meal with them. We went out for an curry and I ate so much I am still full this morning. It was really nice to catch up with them - we haven't seen them for two years.

My eldest and youngest stayed at home with my wife's mother who had kindly offered to baby sit. She did phone us during the evening but fortunately the crisis was TV related and not with the children. It was very kind of her to baby sit as she had already taken my wife and eldest out to a pantomine in the town and treated them to ice-creams and hot chocolates. (I had a lads day in with my youngest and played lego and tidied the kitchen.)

Todays fun website is Orisinal which has some of the sweetest flash games you've ever see.

My eldest getting festive.

Saturday

My wife went to her Mother's with our eldest last night for a meal with a friend so it was just a lads night in for me. Though the other lad (my youngest) had gone to sleep as they left. So I had a night of pottering on the computer and watching telly. Shame there was nothing on worth watching.
Also to cap it all my youngest woke in the night at around midnight and wouldn't go back to sleep. He had been coughing and had hot cheeks so I gave him some cough mixture and teething gel. Though, as he hates medicine of any kind this was a bit of a struggle - not to metion painful trying to rub the teething gel in (he's got very sharp teeth!). I then had to sleep on the floor next to his cot so that he would calm down and go to sleep. Its really wierd and slightly disorientating when you wake up a few hours later on the floor and have to stumble back to bed.

Today's fun website is courtesy of the6masons. They had it on their blog and when I saw it I just had to do my own.

Friday

I've finished for Christmas - hooray! I finished at lunchtime and then went to the shops to get the last few things. Waitrose was packed with lots of polite people trying not to push in to the front of the queue and to not show how frustated they were. I then went to Sainsbury's for the last few bits and it was like a normal day - there were lots of tills with only one customer and I was served straight away.

On the way home everything was covered in frost - in many places the ground was littered with bits of ice that had fallen from the trees. And what with the mist it was very picturesque.

So my holiday starts here. The only thing that I have scheduled is a reading at the carol services on Sunday. I need to meet up with the person I am doing it with to work out exactly what we are doing but we are running out of time...

Today's fun webiste is a request from my wife - it is really a site to advertise a cd/dvd but the sample tracks are very funny. It's called Mother Goose Rocks. My favourite is Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes - especially the character who gets it wrong.

Thursday

Well we finished the present wrapping at just after midnight. I'm not sure if we are slow or just had a lot of presents. At least we can relax on the present wrapping front now, though there are a few 'stocking fillers' to still be wrapped. My next Christmas related project is to buy food for lunch on the day. We are going aroung to my Wife's Sister's House to have lunch with her family and the Mother's in law. We all take responsibility for a part of the meal and this year we are doing the starter. The recipe we are thinking of involves fresh figs, pomegranites, parma ham, mozerella cheese and some sort of crackers. I bet the shops have run out of all of these.

Today's fun link is a favourite of my daugter. It used to be called Paperdoll Heaven which described it better that it's new name of Stardoll.

Wednesday Evening

My eldest has finally broken up for her Christmas holidays. About time - she is worn out. School seems much harder work than I remember it. Or perhaps I was grumpy and tired at the end of term but just didn't realise. I, however, have to wait until Friday lunchtime for my holiday. A whole day and a half of working.

Tonight my wife and I are going to make a start on wrapping the Christmas presents. Hope we can find the sticky tape...

Wednesday

This morning was cold as well, but the roads were better - some had been gritted. I also de-iced my wind screen with cold water. I was slightly afraid that this might cause the windscreen to shatter into a thousand pieces so I did it gently. Though a subsequent quick search on google has revealed that this is more likely to happen if you use hot water out of the kettle!

Today's fun website is Miss Dewey a search engine with a difference. Try searching for different words a la Google - we have tried "how old are you" among other things - the results are different depending on the search term.

Tuesday Evening

The Christmas lunch was as expected. We all stood around and made polite conversation, ate the food and went back to our office. I suppose it's a start...
I am still waiting to hear about the various jobs I have applied for - I suppose that no news is at least not bad news and it means that I don't have to make any hard decisions.

I encountered a good web site today - liveplasma - it allows you to search for films or music that you might like if you like something else. That's good in itself but the interface is fantastic - a dynamic mind map of suggestions. Here's one for Shrek.

Tuesday

It was flipping freezing this morning. It took ages to de-ice the car and even when it was vaguely clear it kept icing up again. In addition the roads didn't seem to have been gritted and so I had to drive really carefully all the way to work. At one corner there was a giant puddle that had turned the whole road into a skid pan. I only lost control slightly and was ok, though the lady in the oncoming car looked a bit worried.

Today we are having an office Christmas lunch. We are going to drive to our other uk office to meet up with the team from that office in order to build intra-departmental unity. This seems a good idea - we don't see the 'others' very often and when we do its at a company meeting or other event where we don't have opportunity to get to know each other.

Monday Evening

Back home. My wife has gone out somewhere - I've put my youngest to bed and am waiting for my eldest to be ready to go. She should be in bed already as she has had the day off school but there you go.
The interview seemed to go ok, although one of the interviewers couldn't make it. It seems quite a nice job but more of a stand alone role than others I have gone for. I'm not sure if that is a bad thing or not. I'm sure if it is the right job all will move forward. I think if they are still interested they will ask me to come for a second interview. The main plus side is that this job is much nearer home and I would be able to get home earlier and it would make other things possible.
I'm sure God knows best and trust that all will work out in the best way...

Monday Morning

Monday morning has come around again. You think that I would be used to it by now, having lived through 1862 of them. It was a particularly cold and damp drive to work today but fairly uneventful.
My eldest is off school as she has still not recovered from the weekend. I wish I could do the same...

A Logo?

Sunday

Today I went to church, as normal. It was a nativity service with a production put on by the younger sections of the church. The bits I saw of it were very good. Unfortunately my youngest got very fidgity very early on and I had to take him out of the service so that he could fidgit in peace (or at least he could fidgit and everyone else could be in peace). My eldest had missed most of the practices for the production and had been so busy yesterday that she was too tired to take part.
Lunch was tomato soup and fresh rolls - from Somerfield (as normal). We have discovered my youngest likes fresh tomato soup. In fact he likes it so much we have to eat ours quickly so that we finish ours before him or he demands a refill. My eldest will, however, only eat economy processed cream of tomato soup -at least this is cheaper.
This evening we went for a walk to deliver Christmas cards and also pop in on my wife's mother. We had a nice hot drink and some cakes. It was quite chilly out, but we were well wrapped up. I like the Christmas lights on peoples houses and the smell of wood smoke.
As I write my youngest is in bed, hopefully asleep and the others are watching a documentary on the television about geese. Tomorrow I have a job interview, but I am trying not to think about it, so I am having a glass of wine and writing this...

A Normal Bloke

I am just a normal bloke with normal interests who does normal stuff.

I have a job, a family, a home and, on the whole, enjoy life very much.