One of Felicity's playgroup offerings over the last few weeks. We have been quite mean to her- having been offered numerous blobs of paint/streaks and totally obliterated paper- when we know that she can produce nice pictures (they don' t have to be of anything in particular -just more than toddler blobs that we would expect of her brother!)- so I actually gave her a challenge and said that I wanted a snowman with blue eyes- and here he is....... along with copious cuddles and praisings and admirings and photos and filings in the cumulative picture file

A heap of Christmassy K***** kids- this so sums up my threee at the moment- a pile of togetherness- complete with the pinchings/pokings/joy/squabbling/fun that this entails- can't live with each other/can't live without each other.

An so it was Christmas/ And what have we done/ Another year over/ And a new one just beginning.........

And christmas came- it seemed so long in coming then was all of a sudden upon us and I didn't do half of the things that I promised myself- peppermint creams/Kringle loaf/crafting -spent all day Christmas eve going in circles trying to do bits to make Christmas day easier and getting more frustrated then was madly wrapping Ms presents at 10pm at night. But anyway the kids had a great time- all loved their special presents and I don't have too many things that need to be homed this year as family etc did great things like books. SJ had a Christmas of lego, FI of paper dolls and TP just loved his helicopter (which we bought him -even though it WAS plastic and WAS a battery toy) and has scarely been separated from it (and goodness forbid one of the others dare to approach it-let alone touch it). Principles are one thing but there are exceptions and I haven't seen too many wooden helicopters with winch arms ( like Whiskey Bravo on Sea Patrol) around........

Anyway I think over the next few days I am going to write myself a list of the things that I wish we had found time for and see if can incorporate them into our 'activity advent calendar' next year- of which we managed about 50% this year- December is such a busy month- seemed to spend half of my evenings creeping up to the activity chain and secretly snipping off 'another' activity that we didn't achieve.

I don't think that my four days at work going into Christmas helped- let alone my six hospitals in 10 hours day!

And the day before Christmas eve Felicity slipped on the ice and got a possible buckle fracture to wrist and us bad parents haven't sought official medical advice!

Need to try harder...