Merry Christmas

Winter weather

Were nearly at the Christmas Holidays again and we have been having some proper wintery weather up her lately. Its all disappeared now, which is a shame, would have been nice to have a proper white Christmas for once. Anyway, I though I would share a few picture that I took over the snowy period.

The Loch

The Broch

Our road

Down the Loch, can you see where the Loch is frozen?

Another view down the Loch

The main road

Halloween toddler party

As I mentioned in the last post, I have not had much time to post up here and this is a prime example of that. Here are a couple of picture from my local toddler groups Halloween party.  The party itself was a great success, although a little messy, as you'll see in the second picture! We decided to go for a very hands on type of affair this year again, as we have done in the past but it seems that every year we get a little bit more adventurous. I didn't get any picture of my shakers that I made, of which I was rather proud. There were several glitter ones, red, green and gold, plus two rice shakers and a pasta one, all with small Halloween shaped in them. They seemed to go down well with the bairns there and have since resided in my playroom at home, after a good wash mind you. 

Some proper dedication by one of the mums. Hand carved and arranged, there us another one just visible at the top of the page. They didn't last long in this shape, the kids soon demolished most of the fruit and nicked off with the googly eyes. 

The party mat, with homemade Halloween playdoh, Halloween jelly with spiders, eyes and other nasties, gooey pumpkins and spooky spaghetti. Just off to the left was the pool used for bobbing for apples, not that much bobbing happened and just out of shot below the picture was the craft table for making spider hand prints and the "sand" pit, filled with pasta, lentils and rice, plus spider, worms and bugs, all plastic of course!

There were many incidents through out the party, including most of the spaghetti ending up on top of one of the toddlers heads, thanks to the actions of his big brother, rather messy although it was very cute, as he sat there looking slightly confused in his vampire costume covered in spaghetti. The other  incident of note was that the apple bobbing seemed to go well over the heads of the children, as several, the young lady included, decided that the correct way to bob for apples was to strip off naked and climb in to the paddling pool. They had great fun playing in the water, eating chunks out of the various apples that were floating around in the water. I'm not sure how hygienic it was, but they were having a great time, laughing away and splashing, plus they all survived, so it cant have been that bad. The final incident of note was related to the Halloween jelly, which gradually disappeared over the course of the party, as more and more of the bairns discovered that it was jelly and decided to have a little snack as they played. The spaghetti, which was cooked, didn't seem to disappear at all though, strange, I cant imagine why all the jelly would disappear but not the spaghetti? 

Also, if anyone ever says to you, "I have an idea, lets fill the sandpit with pasta, lentils and rice, that way it would be as messy", look them square in the eye and say "sounds excellent, we'll leave the tiding up to you then" and then run. I would never have though that replacing sand, which gets everywhere and we seem to be sweeping up for weeks afterwards, with the three items mentions above could actually produce more mess! There was stuff everywhere and when you stand on sand, nothing happens, yet when you stand on pasta it shatters and causes about 10 times the amount of mess, not to mention it really hurts when your not wearing shoes! As does rice surprisingly, although lentils seem fine. On the plus side, when the kids try and eat it, its a lot easier to deal with, mostly as they tend to spit it all out, which is a lot harder to do with a mouthful of sand. 

We have also had the Christmas party already, which went down mostly without a hitch, although the reaction to Santa was mixed as always. I love how kids start bouncing off the walls when you tell them Santa is coming for a visit, but run away and hide when he actually turns up! Still the young lady loved her Disney Princess doll. No more toddlers until next year though, so I need to find something to entertain us for two mornings a week now, although the young lady seems to be enjoying going to Crèche at the moment, so that an option as that's on 3 morning a week.

Christmas Tree

So its been a couple of weeks since I last posted up here. Life has been moving forward as always and finding time to post has been a little difficult. Partly due to real life getting in the way and partly due to the fact that I have been busy over on one of my other blogs, as there has been a lot happening on that front.

Anyway, I've got a lot of posts currently sitting in the draft folder, enough to keep me going until the New Year, provided that I can actually find time to post that is! Hopefully I'll get some time over the next week of two to get things written up and scheduled but time will tell, especially as there is quite a bit of bad weather up here at the moment and the schools have been closed a few days, meaning that I have two little ones to try and keep entertained when nothing is open and you can go and play outside!

One thing we have got done though is the Christmas Tree. We actually put this up way back on the 4th, as my wife was away south on the 1st at a conference in the capitol. I am one of those people who firmly believes that Christmas starts on the 1st of December and that's when the tree and decorations go up, no earlier, even if its a weekend the day before. It has done my head in this year that the local supermarket had there Christmas stuff out on the shelves BEFORE Halloween! I mean, they had to move the Christmas stuff to put out all the Halloween costumes! Really? Next thing you know, they'll just leave them out all year round, to save having to take them down after Christmas and put them back out in Feburary! Anyway, rant over, here's some pictures of out tree this year:

Two stars on the top, one for the little man and one for the young lady, mostly to stop them arguing over who's star went on top.

Sitting in the corner of the room. Most of the decorations that you can see on the tree have been made by the bairns at one point of another and I have no doubt that they will be joined by many more over the next couple of years.

Lights. And no, they don't just go halfway up. The top set are multifunction lights and are actually flashing, I just seemed to have managed to capture the photo just as they all flashed off!

Tried again later and still failed!

The cats have taken quite a liking to the tree or rather the baubles on the bottom of the tree. The bairns think that this is great fun, I just keep wondering if they could possibly pull the tree over!