Don't Eat the Wise Men!

Happy Hogmanay everyone.
I know you've seen "Don't Eat Pete" before, but this picture is just to reinforce how flexible and spontaneous a game it can be. Also, it is the picture of baby Jesus with moveable arms as promised on December 6th.
This past week has just been a lot of being stuck in the house, practicing going to the toilet, crying for more chocolate, screaming as loud as possible followed by laughing as loud as possible and putting monkey stickers on every available surface. That's just me. The girls have just been angelically doing Sudokus all week.

Merry Christmas!

Lots of festive fun going down in Aberdeen - Christmas Mass - Sharon and John helped Grandma and Granda do the music. Ailsa had lots of fun playing Doc and Heather jumped around on a hobby horse with Grandma. Aberdeen beach was biting but didn't stop Ailsa's singing (see Jingle Bells link). Happy Christmas to all.

CHRISTMAS EVE IS HERE





The excitment is mounting and we got to Aberdeen yesterday. I watched Aberdeen lose 2-1 to
Rangers. We had the pleasure of putting up Granda and Grandmas Christmas tree and the ubiquitous Sax-Santas were brought out to help with the Christmas Boogie shuffle. PS - spot SHaron in her PJs

Please refer to Jennifer's Blog

My camera is on the blitz, but lovely pictures of our gingerbread day can be found on Jennifer's blog. Mae and Jennifer came for a baking bonanza this week and stayed to watch Ailsa in her nursery Christmas concert. Ailsa was a shepherd to our surprise. She never mentioned it! I thought she'd just be jingling bells in the crowd but she had a costumed part (all costumes provided by the nursery thankfully). She sang with gusto and looked a very cute bespectacled shepherd. She held tightly on to her crook but dropped her lamb once.

There has been no extravagant work party to go to this year. The neurology departments of Scottish hospitals have a festive, no-holds-barred Christmas....................quiz. John wore his snowman tie yesterday for it. Questions like, "River Phoenix once played a character who had a neurological illness. What was the illness and what was the film?" So I didn't get a sparkly new dress to wear anywhere.

Santa baby

The Christmas festivities have commenced. We went to a Nigerian Church Christmas party which was different. Gospel choir and spicy food. It was a night out for the family and no babysitter required. Ailsa's friend from nursery is Nigerian and her mum invited us. At the end this guy in an inflatable Santa suit came out handing out pressies. We told Ailsa Santa was just pretend but now she's quite confused. When she was a newborn in Nov 2002 - we would sing 'Ailsa-baby hurry down the chimney tonight....' The rest of our weekend has mostly involved varnishing our door, decorating the tree and eating hob-nobs. Here's a picture of the idolatrous varnished door.

Before

This is our jolly little potted tree we got this morning. It's maybe 4 feet high. But next Christmas, after it spends 12 months in our garden, maybe it will be 5 feet tall!
But, more exciting news is A BABYSITTER!!! We have found a nice, local babysitter. She is a child-care student on placement at Ailsa's nursery and lives a mile up the road, on the bus route (saves us picking her up) and has beautiful flaming red hair and wears bright green cardigans. She babysat last night while John and I went to see "The Holiday" at the movies. It was a great, romantic, shmaltzy, Christmassy date, I mean movie.

And in with the New

So here is the newly installed front door, much better looking wouldn't you say? As with any makeover photo, the better photographic angle, warmer lighting and decorative touches count for a considerable portion of the new and improved image.

Out with the Old
This is our front door circa 1963, all metal and glass and draughty. I would have taken the photo from the outside of the house but the camera might have got waterlogged. Can somebody stop this please??? Four days of rainstorms and the Met Office has predicted 2 more days of severe weather warnings. Anyhoo, the point of the ugly door picture is that the new door is being installed tomorrow! I phoned them today to double check that they will work in this kind of weather, and they said yes. I don't know what they plan to do to prevent the sideways rain from coming straight into the house. Wish us luck.

The Happiness Merchant


Here is Heather the peddler of happiness. Patrick (Fox, not Uncle) took this picture last Saturday in Pollock Country Park where we were all swinging, walking and trampolining to burn off some of the calories from the waffles, muffins, cinnamon rolls, etc. Of course, once you've burned off those calories you really feel like you deserve a cup of tea. And you can't have tea without a donut or Kitkat or some shortbread and then you're back at square one. Mmm...squares...
Other news, I've had my hair cut. It's not bad. At first I just looked like a Bay City Roller but a few well-placed hair clips has fixed that. Hairdressers are just a gamble if you ask me, especially if you have curly hair. This one was ok but the words "funky and uneven" were beyond her remit. I'm sure she was thinking, "Lady, your image just screams MRS BLAND, so when you say 'funky', I think you mean 'mumsy but nice'" But no, I meant funky and she wasn't doing it. So now, I look nice, but mumsy. Hairdresser chitchat too. After a few moments' lull she asks, "So, are you doing anything today?" I wanted to say THIS!! This is my big exciting different activity of the day, this is what I will tell my husband when he comes home, you, cutting my hair, that's today's big event. But I just said, "Oh, not much" which of course opens the conversation up to another lull.
At least the happiness peddler was there sticking stickers onto paper and smiling.
Bye,
Bay City Mama

Ailsa has learned to click her fingers for the first time. The girls have learned a new sport (see stair bump).

!!!!!WOAAGGHH - JUMPING ST NICK!!!!

Bethanne goes right to the source.

?Is this where Bethanne got the chocolate recipes and list of all the good boys and girls?

Deep Spiritual Musings















Amidst all the hype, consumerism, chocolate, somewhere there is a search for the true meaning of Christmas....
Our girls are hearing the Christmas story in bits and bobs and trying to make sense of it all. Ailsa and Heather were shampooing Mary and Joseph in the bath and Ailsa said "follow me Joseph, I know the way to Bethlehem, I've got the map."
Then during evening prayers thinking about what to do for Jesus on his birthday - Ailsa said - "I know, lets get Jesus a soother" (dummy for the non-Canadians). Here's some pics of them partaking in the Dutch celebration of St Nicholas' day eating lots of chocs courtesy of Belgian chocolate purveyors B+B.

Happy St Nicholas Day

All our parcels have arrived from Sinterklaas but we haven't opened any of them yet...maybe later today. The picture is of our advent calendar. Most of the doll socks and mittens were knit by my Oma many years ago and inside them are pieces of a Playmobil nativity set!! Close ups of baby Jesus with moveable arms will be posted later.

Full Moon Morning

This is the view from the front door this morning as John cycled away to work. We had a great weekend in Aberdeen and I have finished my Christmas shopping (gloat). There was a German market in the square with a dutch stall making poffertjes!!! Yum! Mom, Patrick knows a song about this picture. It's called "The bathroom's on the right"

AWOL

Sorry about the lack of interesting posts, pics, stories, etc. We're in Aberdeen this weekend, on a social whirlwind weekend. Saturday am was brunch with Neil and Anita (best damn brunch in town, let me tell you) followed by a 3 yr-old's birthday party, then a visit to one of John's workmates, then we hit the road for Aberdeen. We stopped at a roadside restaurant designed for families with little kids-ice cream machines and climbing frames, etc. We had a really nice family day.
Back to the blog world soon,
Sharon