Who needs huskie dogs when you have little kids?

This is Alex pulling all the bags in the sled on the way to school on our recent snowy day... He's so cute.

Bob's the man!

Hoorah! Just had an IM conversation with my friend Cathi in Ireland, who is my co-conspirator in sad Dylan fandom (were not that bad really, we just both like him and have a history of going to see him in concert together). Anyway. I recently found out he's got some UK tour dates in April, over the kids' Easter holiday and suggested she & her family come for a long weekend so we could go see the show - her hubby saw the e-mail and thought it was a good idea (bless the man) so they are coming to visit & Cathi and I are gonna see Bob. That'll be twice in 12 months, which is pretty good for me - I hadn't been in years before my trip to Ireland to catch him at the Kilkenny Festival last June. With Cathi, obviously! At least this time, the girls won't nag me about why they can't see Cathi, Dave & their girls...

Let it snow!

Much to the delight of the children (and the grownups too, I rather fancy) we woke up this morning to a blanket of snow. For once, it was not in the least bit difficult to get the kids up, dressed, breakfasted and ready to head off to school. My friend Sophie had a small sled, and they all took turns pulling one another (we have four families of kids who always tend to walk together as we live just a few houses away - between us, we have 10 kids between Alex at nearly 4 and Thalia at nearly 10 so it's a great gang for things like snowy days. Out of those kids, only 3 are boys!). They also took turns pulling all the mummies as well - surprisingly they managed to pull us all, not just Lana, who is pretty small for a grownup, but bigger people like Sophie (quite tall) and me (not nearly as light as Lana!) too. It was fun, actually. This kind of snow always puts me in a good mood...

There was a quick meeting at school about some teacher changes going on in Olivia's class (in which Sophie and my friend Lorayne - also one of this pack of families - have daughters) so after the meeting, we all decided to go up to the high street in Worcester Park and have a coffee. It was all very civilised, even if we did feel a little silly carrying a bright red sledge around the high street!

More photos of the trip to school here.

"Just like Daddy"

Haircut day today. I usually cut Alex's a little longer than this, but today he insisted he wanted his hair as short as Daddy's, and with another round of nits for the girls (hopefully) just finished it seemed a sensible choice. Isn't he a cutie (and Alex isn't bad either!)



And to make up for not blogging for ages, here's another little taster of what the kids get up to when they aren't fighting with one another... For those of you without young girls, this stuff is called Ello, and it's a bit like Lego, only with lots of interesting shapes - you can make buildings out of it, and people, and it comes in funky colours - it's a building bricks set, essentially, just a bit weirder and funkier than Lego. Obviously aimed at the girl market (that said, Lego is a lot more girl friendly than it used to be, too!). Sarah and Olivia made all these people last night on their Ello table. Cute in a kind of weird way...

The games kids play

I feel somewhat guilty for not blogging for so long, but it never seems as though there is anything specific to say - the kids basically do the same kinds of things they always do - go to school, play, argue with each other... We haven't been anywhere interesting or done anything unusual. I considered blogging about the weather, as we had a big wind storm which brought some trees down on cars in our road (but not our car, luckily) but I kept forgetting to take a photo of the trees down and it seemed silly without it.

So anyway, today I thought I'd show a few of the things they do when they play. All three of them were playing with playdough on and off this morning - Sarah was helping Alex make a cafe (with playdough food) and then she went to play on the computer and Olivia decided to make playdough pictures - this is her creation above- a playdough girl skateboarding and a playdough lion in the grass. Very creative, I thought.

And this is one of Alex's favourite things to do - make a "train" in his room from the little chairs and add passengers - he is the driver of course! Today he was doing this while I was sewing and I had to keep getting up to see which passengers he ha changed for which other passengers. He has a lot of stuffed animals, so there is no passenger shortage.

Some christmas karaoke cheer...

Olivia got a special karaoke microphone thingy for Christmas, so we had lots of singing...