An evening out

It's not often we go out, and even more seldom we go out in the evening together in some sort of synchronised child escape mission, yearning for the normality of adult conversation and the absence of Duplo* that a trip to the cinema or out for dinner brings.

Friday was one such day however, thanks to the generosity of Radio Verulam, our local community radio station. Wifey won a phone (or text) in competition before Christmas that almost saw her swear on local radio. The problem was we'd been playing games with the kids and when the very nice Danny Smith phoned, Wifey was straight on the air. After being told she'd won a prize, Danny asked for a Christmas request and Wifey's mind immediately went blanker than usual. She ended up opting for Last Christmas by Wham!, convinced that this was probably the 5th request for the song in the last hour and the radio station would black list us forever more for having the temerity to win a prize whilst not actively listening to the radio.

Anyway, we ended up at the Speckled Hen on Hatfield Road on Friday night, armed with an email that got us a free meal. Being a shameless cheapskate, I had a 14oz rib eye steak that was the most expensive thing on the menu. It was nice to go out for a pub meal where they actually understood the concept of a rare steak too. We chatted about all sorts of stuff and managed to eat a meal together without getting terrible indigestion, itself a rarity. I had to stop Wifey cutting my steak up for me, she's just programmed to do it for the kids nowadays and almost did it on autopilot**.

We were only out for a couple of hours all told, we didn't want to over exploit my brother who kindly came to babysit, which turned out to be just as well really. When we left the boy was in bed asleep. When we got back he was awake and reading a book in our bed with his uncle sitting next to him. Boy radar apparently detected we had gone shortly after we left...


*nothing against Duplo, especially if used to build a 2001 style Monolith


**this is an exaggeration for comic effect

Win with Cadbury Highlights- sponsored post

If there's one thing Christmas stands for that it shouldn't, it's excess. I certainly had excessive chocolate, crisps, cake, turkey, soft drinks and beer over christmas. I had to actually get my trusty Swiss Army knife out and use one of those tools that nobody really knows what it is for to make another notch on my belt.

Anyway, to avoid post chocolate cold turkey (if not actual cold turkey itself), those nice chaps at Cadbury have sent me some Cadbury Highlights with a big 40 emblazoned on the packet. Fortunately it's not a hot chocolate aimed at the 40 somethings (and I'm definitely not that old anyway), but it's a hot chocolate with a mere 40 calories per mug. It tastes good but I do miss the slight tang of guilt that horrendous calorific intake usually produces.

Because Cadbury's largesse isn't limited to giving me free stuff, they've got tons of competitions on their Facebook page to win what someone has rather charmingly if somewhat antiquatedly referred to as wicked prizes. Prizes are being given away twice a day, every day, and include hair salon vouchers from the spiffy Rush salon, Red Letter Days to design your own fragrance and personal shopping experiences, to name just a few.

Go on, it's lunch time, work won't have Facebook blocked at the moment!

Touching a Nerve

I wrenched my shoulder last weekend in a truly pathetic manner. It wasn't replacing the guttering, putting a fence up, building the decking or anything like what I've done in the past couple of years. No, I think I did it pulling the Mclaren out of the boot of wifey's car.

A week later though and it's no better so I headed down to the out of hours doctors this afternoon. I think it's called out of hours because by the time you've sat there for a portion of the day, waiting to be seen by the doctor, you're basically out of hours and it's time to give the kids tea and then put them to bed. Anyway, I digress. I've been popping ibuprofen and paracetamol all week but it's not made much impact. Turns out I've got some inflamed muscles in my shoulder that are pinching a nerve. The more it hurts, the more I'm tensing the muscle and making the inflammation worse. Hopefully a course of what I technically refer to as drugs will improve the nature of my shoulder and general temperament or at the very least let me get a good nights kip.

How has it come to this?

where's Trevor?

I'm not old, although at 36 some of you might think I'm positively ancient. I'm not, I'm just the same as I was at 21, just a little plumper, and able to grow more facial hair (just). But it's 10pm and I'm actually worrying that I'm not going to get enough sleep and will be all tetchy tomorrow morning. How has it come to this? Even 6 or 7 years ago I'd sometimes stay up til 5.30am playing Football Manager on the computer and then get up a couple of hours later like nothing happened.

Most of it must be down to Fifi who does her adult location questionnaire every night at about 4am. For the uninitiated, this involves her lying comfortably under her duvet shouting "Mummy/Dadda, where are you?" loudly every 20-30 seconds for about 3 hours. If she thinks I'm out fighting crime dressed in spandex, she is going to be sorely disappointed at a future date when she finds out I mostly lie in bed with my head under the pillow trying to drown out her bellowing.

Me and my shadow

"mine"

Fifi might have turned two a week or so ago but at the moment she is doing her best impression of a three and a half year old boy. She's always been fairly good at scrumming, and wrestles with the best of the bigger kids. It probably helps that she's as big as her brother was at two and a half and he isn't a small boy.

But that's fairly normal. For the last few days she's been more or less copying her big brother stride for stride. He wants a banana, she has to have one (and leave most of it). He wants more fish fingers, the fact she doesn't like fish fingers doesn't even enter the equation.He wants to play with his Imaginex Spaceship, so does she. He walks around the room, so does she, two paces behind him. The only thing she wont copy is the sitting on the toilet, there are some things that are just a step too far.

Hotter Shoes- review

Hotter Venture

I'll say this from the outset, I'm a bloke and blokes have a different attitude towards shoes than women do. We do not lust after them, we do not get shoe envy and we most certainly don't cram our feet into shoes that aren't comfortable. So having defined myself as some sort of inverse-woman, what do a think of a £90 pair of Hotter shoes?

Well before I let you into that secret I want to tell you a bit of my footwear history. Apart from a brief dalliance with M&S slip ons that fell to pieces within a month, I've been a life long Clarkes shoe wearer as far as work shoes have been concerned. The quality has dropped since the manufacture shifted overseas but then the same can be said of most of the high street. Sometimes an 11 will fit, sometimes a 12 won't be big enough, there's no particular rhyme or reason and I've been getting more and more dissatisfied with them in the last year or two.

I have a rather great commute that sees me walking two miles through the park to work each morning come rain or shine and then and the end of the day I walk another two miles come more rain or shine. Usually rain it has to be said. The 3 things I look for in shoes are durability, comfort and style, probably in that order. I get a minimum of 25 miles a week out of my shoes and they still have to look smart enough for a full day at work. This is no mean feat.

I've been wearing a pair of Hotter Venture shoes now for nearly a month and with the exception of one of the laces starting to fray, they look pretty immaculate. Frayed laces are a perennial problem for me mind you, since I have big feet but a narrow ankle, I'm always pulling the laces tight to the point where the eyelets almost touch. The shoes have a gortex inner, a very nicely cushioned sole and nice soft leather. I'm as happy striding through the park as I am driving the car or sitting at my desk. The goretex adds a level of security-  I know even if it's pelting it down with rain I'm not going to have wet shoes or feet but at the same time I'm wearing a smart pair of shoes I can leave on in the office.

Very pleased really, and I shall definitely be venture-ing back (hahahaha, see what I did there?) when this pair eventually wear out.

If you go down to the woods today...

... you might get run over by three morons on dirt bikes. I used to walk these woods when I was younger, you're not even supposed to cycle on a lot of them. Pedal bikes are allowed on bridle ways but not public footpaths. This was the second pass in 5 minutes these boys did on us, they didn't slow down very much considering they knew we were there.





Poor little Fifi was really upset and confused by it all. The boy was initially confused and then really cross with the naughty boys. I was just monumentally pissed off with their selfishness. They were selfish for being there in the first place, selfish for spoiling the peace and quiet of the woods, selfish for disregarding other peoples safety and selfish for buzzing a family with two small kids twice in quick succession.

I personally wont be going back to Bencroft Wood off of White Stubbs Lane, near Broxbourne because I get the impression this sort of thing happens all the time.

And I won't love you any more!

We are currently at the zoo, now split into two parties since the incident. The incident happened about 15 minutes ago in the cafe and the boy is now learning to deal with the repercussions of his tantrum.

Indulged with a slice of chocolate cake because he fell over and skinned his knee, he decided he didn't want it because Fifi had a penguin biscuit. Rather than pushing the plate aside, he planted his fist squarely in the cake and flattened it. And then started thrashing around when I took him outside to calm down. A couple off attempted bites later, I decided the best way to punish him would be an hour in the car with me while everyone else went round the zoo.

He doesn't love me any more and will never love me, he hates me, he will pack his things up and runaway when we get home and he will shout at me forever. He is cross with me because I am a naughty daddy.

It's only his second week at nursery and I'm sure that it's at the root of all these sudden tantrums but I suppose we have to be firm with him.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone on the move!

Wednesday is the tipping point of the week

Monday is a day full of peace and quiet, the blessed relief of escape from the chaos of two small children to some semblance of sanity.

Tuesday is a day of hardwork, where the weekend catches up with me and I have to struggle to stay focused.

Wednesday is the tipping point, I've started having enough of the working week and am looking forward to the weekend.

Thursday is a mad panic to get all the work done that needs to be done so I can have an organised end to the working week.

Friday is often a day of chaos as I've utterly failed to correctly estimate the actual amount of work that was still outstanding.

Saturday and Sunday are busy and tiring beyond belief but fun as I get to play with the kids and wife all day long. Although I do occasionally spoil it by making myself a bit grumpy on Saturday by staying up too late Friday night.

Very good- sponsored post

Before we had kids the bane of my life was shopping for clothes. It was interminable at times. And that was just when it came to looking for stuff for myself. I had to learn a whole new vocabulary for saying “yes, that looks nice.” too. About a hundred or two hundred different ways of saying it at that.

Of course now we have two small under 4’s, the problem is now a thousand times worse since we have two small children hanging off us and hiding under the clothing racks. It is nearly impossible to try anything on without being driven to distraction, let alone have an opinion on something when a small child is to trying to disembowel you with a coat hanger. I'd never considered shopping online for clothes at places like Very.co.uk.

Buying stuff online is a habit I’ve had for around ten years now but until recently it’s only been CD’s, games and consumer electronics that I’ve bought. Recently though I’ve been increasingly determined to buy everything that is humanly possible online. The trauma of shopping with kids is too much.

Fortunately for me (specifically because they sell a lot of things that please my lady wife), Very run a rather useful online shop. Unlike a lot of other online retailers, Very comes across more like an old fashioned high street store transformed into an online department store rather than a DVD or book retailer that's branched out. I’m rather partial to Timberland stuff myself, as I’m a big bloke and their sizing is generous to ridiculously tall (and slightly plump) chaps like myself.



I’ve always been a bit reticent about ordering clothing online due to the sizing but frankly it was a bit of an overblown worry, XXL is XXL and anyway, Very offer free returns to boot. So if you’re driven to distraction by kids or can’t be bothered trudging round the shops, Very is worth a look!

What parents need to know about video games

I'm not the Daily Mail and I'm not about to lay the blame of every single teen gun massacre on video games as a result. I am however 36 and has been playing games since 1982 and have even had the odd review published on a games site. As a parent I want to tell you some things about the games your kids might either be playing or want to play because their friends do that you might not appreciate.

The impetus to share my knowledge with other parents has come from reading a question on a parenting site that asked whether it was okay for a 13 year old to play 18 certificate games, specifically Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. The parent who asked the question said they sometimes let their boy watch 18 certificate films if they'd watched them first and vetted them but when it came to games, neither of the parents played them and didn't have the first clue.

Active not passive
Although it is possible to get caught up in a film, especially at the cinema or if it's in 3D, the act of watching a film is by nature very passive. The viewer sits there and watches the film. End of. Gaming is very different, it is an active experience where the gamers decisions and actions influence what is happening on screen. That's stating the obvious really but what if I were to give this example:

In Pulp Fiction, Jules and Vincent Vega execute Brett in a rather dramatic fashion whilst retrieving a briefcase. They're a bit nasty in the lead up to it all but that's to be expected in a Tarintino film. In Grand Theft Auto 4 (and the rest of series for that matter), you can make your character have sex with prostitutes, then beat them up and take the money back or even shoot them.


Okay, you don't get to see graphic sex but the language is blue, the car rocks to the action and afterwards you can pump the victim full of lead and leave her in a pool of blood. Not quite Space Invaders is it?


Times they are a changing

more innocent days

Video games have changed in the last ten years. The graphics, the capability of the machines that run the games, and the budgets have all increased dramatically. When Rambo came out on the Spectrum in the 80's, an indistinct little blob shot other indistinct little blobs. Nowadays you can shoot peoples kneecaps off, dismember them with chainsaws or knives, blow them in meaty chunks with hand grenades and a million other graphic deaths. When the original Playstation came out in the mid 1990's the storage format from games changed from cartridges (like the Nintendo DS still uses) to CD and over night the storage increased by several hundred times, allowing for video clips, animated sequences, which when coupled with the powerful 3D capabilities of the new machines saw the beginning of the march towards ultra realistic graphics in games.

That's not to say I subscribe to the school of thought that says "Ban this sick filth!" because I don't and for some very good reasons. Did you know that market research in 2008 showed the average gamer had been playing games for a minimum of 12 years and was around 35 years old? These violent 18 certificate games are targeted at 30 somethings who have the life experience (and maybe the maturity) to differentiate between fantasy and reality. They can see that games like Grand Theft Auto have their tongues firmly in their cheeks. And lets not forget that these games are certified, albeit in a confusing manner at the moment. Games with certain themes (like violence or those that encourage criminal activity) are certified by the BBFC, the same organisation that certifies films. This will be passing to the Video Standards Council soon but the principle is still the same. For those that fall outside of this remit, the PEGI voluntary rating scheme is used.


The numbers behind the video game industry are frightening, in 2009 in the US alone, revenue from the sale of games was over $10bn. There are games out there that have the budget of a Hollywood movie, and the gritty realism to match. You wouldn't let a child go to the cinema to watch something like The Expendibles on their own, why would you let them play an inappropriate video game?

IKEA SAGOSTEN review

Yes, carnage did ensue

The day hasn't come yet when I can walk into a branch of Ikea and order a PLINKY* but thanks to the arrival of the SAGOSTEN to review, I'm not too fussed.

The SAGOSTEN is a sort of beanless beanbag for kids. It has an incredibly durable inflatable inner, which for some reason appears to be sold separately to the outer. According to the website the ladybird cover doesn't appear to be one of many but I assume there will be more along in a minute, like some sort of insectile bus or something.

Not that it matters because our children have officially decreed the SAGOSTEN the best thing in the history of things. It's currently not being used as something to sit on mind, it's being used as a sort of mobile scrumming device. You can inflate the ladybird to suit the sitter but in our case I decided my best course of action would be to nearly pass out through manually blowing it up whilst being attacked with Duplo by the kids. Fortunately as the stars began swarming in my vision I reached the point where I had to seal it up.I think it would take an airbed pump but we don't have one.

little did he know what was in store for him

The SAGOSTEN is like a lot of Ikea stuff in that it's near indestructible. This has been evidenced time and time again in the last week. I was minding my own business making a sandwich (always a fatal mistake, I should have known better) when the Boy towed Fifi into the kitchen on it the other day, dragging it by its ears (the ladybird, not his sister) and that's not taking into account the latest and best game which involves putting it about 3ft away from the sofa and belly-flopping onto it. It still looks pristine.

Handily, the zip on the ladybird slip case is pretty childproof. There is no drawstring/tag on it and you can push it into a little recess when it's zipped up to stop the kids undoing this- a feature which every single cushion maker needs to adopt this very minute.

At a combined price of £23.48, I really can't fault the SAGOSTEN. It's so much better than a bean bag and really funky.


*PLINKY doesn't exist but I think it's such a great name for an IKEA product it jolly well should.

Getting down with Joe Browns- sponsored post

Now I’m well entrenched in my mid 30’s and have past the 15 year landmark when my mum still attempted to buy my clothing for me on a regular basis. That’s frightening since my mum was still desperate to clothe me head to foot in M&S.

Fortunately my clothing tastes have developed a bit since then, and now I’m to be seen wearing a wide variety of stuff. I don’t tend to wear trendy youth orientated stuff, which makes sense as I’m a bit of an odd shape, 6ft 4 and a bit chubby and it looks a bit silly on me. A lot of the high street stores seem to exclusively stock up to 34 inch waisted trousers with short legs. Not much use unless I fancy looking like  Mr Bean really.



Of course there are other brands out there that fit big blokes like me but since my self avowed promise to do the majority of my shopping online due to harassment from two small children (my own, I hasten to add, not two random kids that follow me around whilst I’m shopping, that would be odd).



Joe Browns position their clothing as men’s hippie clothes. Fortunately the hippie movement now days washes itself considerably more than it did in the 70’s where if you went to a Pink Floyd or King Crimson concert then the smell would probably rip the lining from your nostrils. Anyone who can sell a knitwear cardie called the Tremendous Chunky Knit has to be worth a shufty in my book. www.joebrowns.co.uk is well worth a rummage as far as I’m concerned.

I think we might want a cat-help!

It's just over a year since Fifi and the boy have had regular cat time. The lovely childminder that Fifi spends two days a week at (and the boy a day) has two cats. Fifi has a natural affinity with them, and on occasion has been followed home by at least one of them. In fact we've even had to ferret one out from under her cot on occasion.

So it's a given that she would absolutely love a pet cat, but increasingly we've been wondering if the boy might like one too. He's always ambivilent with anything that isn't i) a new DVD or ii) something to dress up in but after we went for a walk round the RSPCA shelter, he was very taken with the idea.

choice reading material

So taken in fact he went home and built his cat a little bed next to his. It had a couple of blankets to keep that cat comfy and a selection of jumpers so it could wrap up warm in the night, as well as selected reading material. He really seems to have warmed to the idea and we think it might help his frustration that he's finding at school due to his speech impediment.

Although he is a very very strong lad, he can also be surprisingly gentle and delicate when he wants to be, we saw this with his cousin over the weekend. She's well under a year old but the cuddle he gave her and the stroking was incredibly careful.

I've always harboured the desire to own a cat but only in the abstract, "wouldn't it be nice" sort of way that you harbour interests about a lot of things. Are there any cat owners out there that have an opinion on the whole cat subject? I don't even know the running costs of a cat- food, insurance etc, or whether having a cat flap is an absolute necessity. I am indeed a cat neophyte.

Review your car and win some cash with Auto Trader

The time when you could turn the telly on and see Chris Goffy extolling the virtues of a Rover estate are long gone and have been replaced by cries of “Power, power, power!!”, as Jeremy Clarkson goes round a corner sideways in a 1,000BHP supercar. It makes for good telly but isn’t very helpful for us mortals who actually want to know about the sort of cars that ordinary people might like to buy. The same goes for 5th Gear on Channel 5 too, which is a shame and leaves a real hole in the market.

Whilst Auto Trader aren’t seeking to fill this hole, there they do have a massive section for readers reviews. We bought ourselves a 2nd hand Vauxhall Zafira a couple of years ago and trawling the experiences of owners was an invaluable resource. Of course if we had been about to spend £350,000 on a hand built sports car, Top Gear might have come into it’s own but we were about £346,000 short so it didn’t really matter.

Of course a readers review section is only as good as the quality of the reviews there, and to boost the quantity and quality of the entries, Auto Trader are running a competition until the end of the month. The ten best reader reviews will win £1,000 each, with the best also getting to hang out for the day with the journalists on that esteemed organ. You can see my entry, under the inspired user name of alexw here.

Sharing the same interests

The towering inferno pre inferno

The boy is already developing a healthy interest in superheroes, space ships and the like, all of which I'm really pleased about. But he's also getting massively into Lego, particularly building tall towers. Obviously he only managed to build this one to head height himself, I added to it to take it up to my head height, but over 3 foot high in a 2x2 block required a fair amount of manual dexterity and also was great fun to knock down too!

After we demolished it, we built 4 spaceships out of it that had to spend an hour flying to and from Tracey Island which apparently exists in our kitchen, just in front of the dishwasher.

The boy has had some issues with nursery this week that's left him frustrated and seen him hit out, metaphorically and physically at people but he is still the same lovely boy who's pre-school final report said he was a real caring boy who always looked out for other kids and made sure people were okay if they were upset.

Not the best start

I've blogged and tweeted about the oddness of our boys nursery school demanding to come round and have a jolly good snoop at our house before he started last Friday. It did however give wifey a chance to reinforce the fact he has oral dyspraxia and is currently having speech therapy for it. It's not bad enough that he's been statemented but it's bad enough that communication is sometimes an issue. If you've not heard of dyspraxia, there is a good description of it here.

We were upset enough when he was struggling a bit to explain something to us a while back and told us in frustration that his words were rubbish- something one of his friends at pre-school had told him but now we've got to the bottom of why he didn't want to go to nursery on Tuesday to the point of screaming, crying and hitting his mummy, I'm more than upset. I'm upset and I'm bloody furious.

The boy spent most of the Christmas holidays wanting to wear his new school uniform in the knowledge that he was starting big boy school in the new year. When the day came around finally, last Friday, he was up and dressed at 7.20 in the morning, eager to get out of the door.

He was a little more reluctant on Monday but Tuesday saw an entirely different boy. He was beside himself, sobbing uncontrollably, hitting his mummy, dragging his feet, like the worst days of pre-school magnified a hundredfold. He didn't tell us anything was wrong, so we just assumed he didn't want to go and dragged him along.

And then last night we found out that his teachers, the teachers who had been round to our house and sat their while wifey explained to them about his dyspraxia, made him give a talk to the class at the start of his very first full week at nursery. I don't understand, I simply do not understand how something as plain moronic as that could happen. He's so shy about his words, he wouldn't tell us what had happened because he's ashamed he can't speak properly and even though they were told 3 working days previously he had this problem, his teachers made him talk to his class.

Yes they can apologise but it doesn't undo what's been done, the poor fella was obviously in stark terror at the prospect of having to do the same thing on Tuesday, and we forced him to go. Trust needs to be regained with the boy and it's not even our fault.

What's in a name?

I must have been in my early to mid teens before I knew either of my parents first names. I was quite an immature lad, slow in growing up and still thought of my mum and dad as "mum" and "dad" and nothing else until I was quite old.

Our two on the other hand are a bit different. The boy went through a brief phase of calling me "Alex" but it passed in a week or two. Fifi is being a bit more determined though. For months now she's called me "Alex" most of the time, more so when she's angry, cross with me or annoyed. And it's beginning to grate. I don't want to be "Alex" to my two little ones, I'm Alex to the rest of the world. I want to be "Daddy" to the pair of them for a long time to come.

The appearance and disappearance of a beard

proto-beard

Every Christmas I have my annual attempt to decide how much I've progressed on the road to being a man. That's right, I see how much beard I can grow. By the time he was in his early 40's, my dad could manage a full Gerry Adams (and my dad looked just like him too, same hair, same glasses, same actors voice on the telly). I'm a shade under 36 now and still travelling down that road. This year however was the most encouraging yet.

What I tend to do is grow 2-3 weeks of face hair and then prune it into something like a goatee. This years didn't elicit the usual howls of derision from Wifey and I took that as a good sign. I shaved the unkempt mass down to a goatee while the bath water was running for the nippers. Once I'd plonked the boy in his bath, I asked his opinion. He looked at me, reached out and prodded it and said, "But it's a bit silly." Crushed, I left it on for the rest of the evening and then shaved it off prior to going back to work.

There's always next year I suppose.

RIP Chris Rea

NOT Gerry Rafferty

It's been a funny old Christmas period for the passing of celebrities. We were watching Inception at the weekend when I heard news of Pete Postlewaite shuffling this mortal coil, which was ironic as he played an elderly bed ridden chap who dies for the progression of the story in the film. So yesterday when I found Chris Rea Gerry Rafferty (I always get those two confused, even though they sound nothing alike, so for a bit I even told everyone Chris Rea had popped his clogs) had passed away, again at a relatively early age, I was a bit unsettled.

Christmas is always a time of family but there are so many families that are rocked by a sudden death around Christmas that there is part of me that fears its approach every year. Wifey's Nan died at Christmas a long time ago and I know it still affects her family. My heart goes out to Jen at the Madhouse, who lost her Mum this Christmas just gone too. I know people die all the time and from my own grand parental experience, it doesn't necessarily have to happen at Christmas, it just seems more unfair and upsetting when it does. So Pete and Gerry are celebrities who've passed away in the last few days but spare a thought for their families and other ordinary families who are starting the new year without a loved one, a new year very different to the one they were expecting.

Yes, I'm in a reflective mood today, can you tell?

Drawn in

We've been working hard to get the boy interested in craft activities. His drawing is still scribbling, his painting is messy and his colouring in is all over the shop.

It's not that he is uncreative or anything, quite the reverse but I think he's too much of a perfectionist. He wants his colouring to be perfect from the first attempt and gets very frustrated when it doesn't come good first time.

That's why I was really proud of the above attempt. Okay, there aren't a huge number of green spaceships out there but I'm sure the ones that are there aren't any better coloured in!

All isn't quiet on new years day

We've been up since 5 something am playing with Little People and putting things into bags and taking them out again.

Glad we didn't stay up to see the new year in. We did watch the rather odd boys film, the Expendables. It was like the 1980's had never ended. Nothing could really top the unintentional humour of that so we gave up and went to sleep...