I am hooked on Pink Martini!

I've just heard a rather loud dragging sound and turned around to see TB pulling an empty suitcase into the living room. On asking him what he was doing he said 'I just want to pack all my things away'. Well, it's keeping him quiet.

On a completely unelated note, I'm going to attempt to make a baked chocolate orange cheesecake to take to Y's tonight. Wish me luck.

For the second part of our extended Christmas we shipped ourselves off to mum's for two days. Last year the three of us had flu and the year before TB had a stinking cold so it's quite a novelty to have him in a good mood at Christmas.
On Christmas eve we laid out a sock (his stocking being at mum's) and a chocolate muffin for santa. In the morning he'd forgotten about them in favour of cold orange juice but was happily reminded and ran off to check. He was so pleased that santa had eaten the muffin and left presents. 
He hated (just as we did as kids) the generations long tradition of waiting until after lunch and the washing up being done before he could open his presents. Mum did however put together a stocking for him and he delighted in showing off the remote controlled helicopter V had bought for him.

Lunch was a non-event as far as he was concerned. Why eat when there are presents to be opened. The tune changed slightly when he was presented with ice cream for dessert, but not for long. In between asking to get down from the table and picking at his food he achieved more with a Christmas cracker puzzle than any of the rest of us and sang the songs he'd refused to sing in the nursery Christmas play.

When he was finally allowed he happily delivered each present from under the tree to its recipient and sat down to open his own pile. (Silly mummy for buying the most difficult to rip paper ever!)

TB loved everything he received although there are a few things he's a bit wary of. Mum bought him a robot that walks and makes shooting noises which he'll only turn on if it's walking away from him. Yuri and I bought a version of pop up pirate (except it's a rat) and it took a few games for him not to be sacred of the flying rat. Mind you, I think he has a point!

He was an angel all day, except for bedtime when he staged quite a protest. That was, until I told him if he wasn't good santa claus would come in the night and take away all his presents. Then he was no problem.

All in all, a successful day I think.

Our rather extended Christmas started yesterday. It was due to span just two days, but lack of transport in London and overpriced Christmas day taxis sent that idea down the pan. We had to get TB back from V&C's so we settled on Sunday for our first Christmas.

In a moment of sheer greatness, I put all of TB's present in hiding, aside from a watch and a nightlight.

Our Christmas fun started with Y being incredibly late, and not going to be able to bring her food pre-prepared as planned. Then, on arrival in our car park/dungeon, grandmother fell and gashed her head open. At first it looked like it'd stopped bleeding nicely (no thanks to my lack of a first aid kit (tut tut, I know) and V's constant bashing of the supposedly forming clot in an attempt to clean it) so we carried out. Days ago TB had already found a few of his presents (suspicion is that he was led to find them by V) and he wanted to show them off. But, as Y arrived, it seemed that a trip to hospital to get Grandmother's gash checked out was necessary.

So C (driver) and I (GPS system) bundled grandmother into the car and headed off to St George's. Considering it was two days before Christmas, A&E was surprisingly empty and Grandmother was checked out fairly quickly - stitches were needed. The nurses were checking people amazingly quickly, but it seemed that nobody was actually making it as far as getting treated. We waited for almost three hours for Grandmother to get treated, and then another hour for the stitches. We finally made it home at just after 12. And still had dinner to eat.

We all had a lovely haul of presents. TB's mainly consisted of remote controlled vehicles: a helicopter; amphibious tank; a monster truck that jumps; a funny whirry thing with a horrible rotor that has tried to remove digits from three of us already. I happily received a blender and a new pair of trainers from my boys. Yuri was happy with his new bag and more t-shirts.

All of us, TB included, finally fell into bed at about 2:30. Unfortunately, TB woke at a not so respectable 9:30 this morning, and is happily playing with his new toys, some of which are in his 'secret' box (the box from my trainers). Now, just over an hour later, I've pretty much joined the land of the living. Shame no-one else in the house has!

I have pleurisy

nuff said.

I love this picture. To me it says normally we're so awful we know you won't believe a word we say, so here's photographic evidence.

The big dress dilemma!

In January we'll be in Salvador, Brasil, for Y's wedding. Finding the appropriate dress has been an absolute nightmare, but I've now found two! The trouble is, I can't decide between them! So I'm going to ask you!

In Brasil people apparently tend to dress up quite a lot for weddings. This one starts at about 5:30 and the expected heat will be about 40 degrees. However, I'm not exactly one for standing out in the crowd - especially when that crowd and I don't speak the same language.

Answers on a postcard please!

And this is what was on the train this evening...

Sorry about the rotation - I did it the wrong way round on my phone and can't figure out how to sort it!

Last weekend I recieved a rather random text saying

Secure Mail plan to deliver item *****
between 9-5 on 4/12
your ID & sig reqd
pls confirm by TEXT with Y or N + new date NOT before 4/12

In my suspicious mind I figured some unscrupulous company had sold my number and I was now destined to be the recipient of a large amount of text spam. And, because I have no desire to increase the frequency of said spam, I ignored it.

I got the same text the next day and got curious. I googled the text and saw that someone else had
received the same and they were also waiting for a passport. However, I just couldn't believe the passport service would send such random texts that give no indication of what you might be about to receive.

Yesterday I recieved a letter. Guess what? i should've responded to that text. But how was I to know?

It sounds like monsters on the roof!

The people in the flat above ours have bought a treadmill. We found out at about 8:30 this evening, when we started to try to put TB to bed and it sounded like the ceiling aboive his bed was about to cave in. Needless to say, Yuri went to complain.

I asked TB what 'that noise [sounded] like'. He said 'it sounds like monsters on the roof'.

Christmas is here!

On Thursday, seeing as I was battling with enough shopping bags to floor an elephant, I decided to add a Christmas tree to my load. Having wrestled my bagged delights onto the crowded tram and back from the tram stop I thought I could collapse at home and forget about Christmas. Not so. Yuri took one look at the boxed tree and decided it had to come out there and then. So I spent all that evening protesting that we couldn't have the tree up until December.

As a child, and even till this day, m and d get a tree a week or two into Decembe, and it sits outside looking miserable until maybe the 22nd or 23rd, when it finally gets dragged in and B goes into military operation style decorating frenzy. All I ever wanted to do in the first half of December was decorate that tree and get on with the party season.

So, having had that 3ft tree sitting on the coffee table all day, loo0king sand and undecorated, I decided last night was the time to bring Christmas into our house. We picked TB up from school and took him off to pick decorations (this is the first tree we've had in our house since he's been born) and he decided on silver glittery stars and presents. Ok, there was a little persuasion from me - gold just wouldn't have gone with the lights on that tree. We brought them home and spent the evening decorating.

This morning, when I went back into the living room to check on TB, I found each of the ribbon wrapped presents lying in a pile of unwrapped ribbons. Well, Tommy thought it was amusing. I, however, feat that my threat that if he plays with the decorations again the whole lot will go away, will not be anough to stop him.

We're picking up the remainder of the presents this afternoon, once they're wrapped and the cards are sent, the whole lot's done. I wrapped every present we've got so far last night.

I don't think I've ever been so organised!