Who needs toys...

when you have a large box to play in?

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Father Christmas

Waiting...
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When my parents were visiting we took the Podlings to see Father Christmas. We went to Bridgemere Garden Centre and joined the queue for the grotto. Then we queued some more and when we got bored with that we....well we queued a bit more! Suffice to say it was a long wait and Emma was getting a bit fed up by the end of it.

All their boredom was forgotten on entering into the room with the man himself! The nervousness! The excitement! I remember it all from my own childhood and I thrill to experience it all again with my children. They did things slightly differently here in that you didn't do the usual sit on Father Christmas's knee, tell him what you want for Christmas, have your photo taken and you're done thing. Here, a group of children are ushered into a room where Father Christmas was sleeping by a fireplace. The children then wake him up and he reads them a story. Then each child (or group of siblings) gets to go up and have a little private chat with him before going to choose a toy from his shelves. It was lovely as the children get to see more of him that way and the Podlings loved it.

My only complaint (aside from the exorbitant cost!) was that there was no opportunity to get a decent photo. I do like to get a nice photographic record of these things and I was rather disappointed not to get a nice photo of the Podlings with Father Christmas. My dad did get a couple that were a bit better than mine, so when I have had a chance to pinch them I'll add them to the end of this post.

 Waiting to see Father Christmas

 Still waiting...

 Are we there yet?

 And we're still waiting! As you can see, Tom has had a haircut. Doesn't he look handsome!

Emma listening to Father Christmas tell a story

The only photo I was able to get of the Podlings with Father Christmas. I even dressed them all in red ready for a good picture!

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Emma sings Alphablocks

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Alphablocks is an excellent CBeebies programme that teaches children phonics. Mark and I love it as much as the Podlings! I credit the Alphablocks with helping both Tom and Lily with their phonics since they both had a sudden, dramatic improvement with their reading at about the time I was putting the programme on for them a lot. I can already see Emma picking up the basic letter sounds from her favourite episodes and she loves to sing along. One of our favourite episodes is 'Why?' in which the letter Y laments not being a vowel. Here is a short video of Emma (in pyjamas) singing along...

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Gingerbread house

I love all things gingerbread. My sister and I made a fabulous gingerbread house completely from scratch one year, complete with stained 'glass' windows. That was fun, but we were teenagers and it took us most of an afternoon. My little ones are still young and don't yet have that kind of staying power, so I've bought them ready-baked kits the last couple of years. This year I bought this rather adorable Lebkuchen house kit from Aldi (it was only £4.99!) and added in a bag of dolly mixtures and a bag of midget gems to add to the decorating options. We took advantage of the teachers striking the other week to put it together. Whilst I'm sure Emma would have loved to have had a go at this, I thought Tom and Lily would find it rather frustrating to have a two year old 'helping' them, so we waited until she was down for her nap. I pretty much assembled the house for them, but they had a great time decorating it. Unusually, Tom was still at it long after Lily had moved on to something else.

The hardest part was convincing them not to eat it straight away! I've told them we can eat it on Christmas eve, though I notice there are already quite a few sweets missing. I actually caught Emma in the act the other day. She had moved her ride-on car over to the where we are keeping the house, climbed on it and was trying to pick a midget gem off the roof. Little pickle!

 Getting ready to decorate.

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School Christmas Concert

Tom is the rather adorable camel on the far left of the middle row.

Last week both sets of grandparents, Emma and I descended on Tom and Lily's school to watch them in their Christmas concert. Tom was a camel (and a very cute one) and I have included a short video of Tom doing part of his dance in the concert. He did really well, especially since his costume was clearly driving him nuts!

Poor Lily! She was removed from the stage in tears before I was able to get a picture of her. Her class were all dressed as children on Christmas eve and they all looked adorable in their nightclothes, slippers and dressing gowns. Unfortunately, Lily saw us all in the audience and started crying. Not because she was afraid to go on stage, but because she missed us!

Lily loved preparing for the concert and was really excited about it, but she did warn us that she was going to cry if she saw us. The school did four performances of this concert and Lily was all smiles in every one except the one I went to. In fact, a friend of mine who went to a different performance told me that Lily was making eye contact with her and beaming throughout her entire performance! She always does this to me! Next year I think I will tell her I'm going to one performance and sneak into a different one so I can actually see her!

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.Apologies for the shaky footage. It is hard to hold the camera steady when you have a fidgety two year old on your lap!

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Brotherly love

Tom adores his baby sister. Here they are enjoying breakfast together last week. Tom tells me he is going to marry Emma when he grows up. I don't suppose he'll thank me for recording that fact when he is older, but I think it's so sweet!

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In which I get back to blogging!

Well, it's been a while! I'm not sure I've ever gone this long without updating the blog before. We've all been fine, just busy, busy, busy with school things, Christmas preparation and a visit from my parents. Mum and Dad came up last week and left on Sunday and we finally got to enjoy a week long visit without the whole lot of us getting a stomach virus! We had a lovely week, just enjoying each other's company and there simply wasn't any time left for blogging. Needless to say this leaves me a little behind with my photos, so I shall get back into the swing of things by sharing a few pictures I took of my parents with the Podlings during their visit. I even managed to get a couple of my mum, who generally doesn't like being photographed!

 Dad showing something to Tom on his laptop whilst Emma provides musical accompaniment!

Dad showing Lily pictures of some of his metal-detecting finds.

Drawing with Nanny

My mum has a bubbles screen saver on her laptop that Emma loved.

Playing Hungry Hippos with Grandad

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