Happy New Year to you all. I hope you have had a wonderful time over the holiday season. I hope you and your family have a great new year, filled with love, laughter and plenty of smiles. When I left you last week in my weekly photos post it had been filled with birthday and Christmas. This week, we have another birthday, two in fact. Last Sunday was Hogmanay or New Years Eve for non-Scottish speakers 😉 I forget sometimes that not everyone knows what Hogmanay is. We celebrate Hogmanay these days by first footing, watching the bells ringing in ending with the canon being fired. A toast and wishing everyone happy new year. How do you celebrate it? We made our Hogmanay wish as I used Aria’s photo above. We say “Lang may yer lum reek.” This means “long may your chimney smoke.” It’s the best way to wish your friends and loved ones a long and healthy life. Hogmanay was Robert’s brother in law’s birthday. So in the tradition of Robert’s family, we headed down to their house to celebrate. First, we played in the snow and Lucas had a snowball fight with his dad. I think we can tell who won. We had birthday dinner, cake and then watched the Hogmanay show. Robert has to leave before the bells, so he can first foot the house. He takes a bottle of whisky. There should be some coal too, but who knows where you get that these days. The kids were all still awake, although in their PJs and tired. We all wished each other a very happy new year and then said our goodbyes. We watched the fireworks while heading home to bed. It is a lovely way to spend Hogmanay. What did you get up to?
New Years Day started later than normal, albeit my early riser Lucas was up at his normal time. We stayed in our jammies, ate some food, chilled and watched some tv. Made our New Year goals, we wrote them in my diary to make us accountable and will look at them again later on in the year. Robert made some gluten-free traditional steak pie and we had a lovely Ne’er day dinner with an early night for the kids.
I must admit I have loved these holidays so much and I am not ready for them to end. The next day we did some more chilling around the house. I started building the Titanic model and helped the kids with their toys and we played top trumps and some other games. The boys have been playing their new Xbox more than they normally would with their friends, but like I said, they are so active with football, etc we are never in long enough to play much. Aria and I made some bracelets too. I’ve not blogged other than my weekly posts I love and I’ve hardly been online. Well, nowhere near as much as normal. I have loved it. No pressure, no timescales, no nothing. I am not sure I will get back into it.
The 3rd and what should have been my first day back at work for Robert and I was Robert’s 40th birthday. The kids and I were up early to set up the banners, balloons and gifts. He came downstairs to a lovely surprise. Opened his gifts. Lots of gym things for him, his request and a few surprises. The kids and I made a gluten-free cake, I am always wary of gluten free cakes, especially birthday ones as I haven’t perfected the recipe yet. We went out for lunch and to pick up a few bits for the evening and then Robert’s family descended for the birthday dinner and cake. My mum came too which was nice. The kids have missed her, with me being off, she’s not been here to watch them and they are close to her. As they are to Robert’s parents too who watch them when I am at work. Robert had a lovely birthday and said the cake was the best he’d ever eaten, so I’m taking that as a win.
Robert went back to work the next day. I have still taken holidays until Monday, which I am so glad of. The kids and I have spent the Thursday and Friday, building more Lego. I finished my Titanic model above, which I loved. I’ve thought a lot about my writing and what I want to do for next year. Tyler, Aria and I made lots of slime. You can see by Aria’s face she was delighted by this. Sometimes it’s the little things I don’t always get the time to do. It’s nice just being able to say yes to the kids, not I’ll do it at the weekend or when I get in from work or it’s too late to start that. We’ve chatted and just sat about. I plan so much on my days off to make up for the days I’m at work, that it’s like a whirlwind. We do talk all the time, but it was nice just to do nothing in particular. When I’m off work I feel the need to bake, craft, build, everything and still I feel like it’s not enough. This has made me see it’s more than enough. We just want to sit in the same room and it’s ok to do our own thing. Don’t get me wrong, every time I opened a book to read or a document to write they would ask me to do something and that was ok.
This weekend saw Tyler’s football training back, which meant Robert was back to coaching. We are gradually easing back into it. Tomorrow, Sunday, we are going out for a lovely wee meal to finish off our holidays. It’s back to work and back to school on Monday. I don’t think it will go particularly well, that’s just for me, but we will see. I have decided to make a big step forward in my writing of my novel and I need to do that next week. Will I do it? We’ll I’ll try. I will write a whole other post on it. Overall we have loved these holidays more than previous, I am not ready to leave our bubble. But, we have made memories, we have grown as a family and we have loved it. How have you found the holidays? What have you been up to this weekend? 
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