E - Vida

It is almost a distant memory...but some parts are particularly vivid! Like, I can still hear Baby shouting as we hauled the Christmas tree out the back door and packed the decorations away. "It must stay up! It must stay up!" she wailed. But, what we lost in the festive look of the lounge, we gained in the form of a packing conveyor belt. Once our dinner guests had left on the Sunday night, we were all stations go on the final pack. Goodbye Tree!  On Monday morning we hit the road to New York. Our 5 plus SIL, her son and Ma. Excitement levels, barakat levels and petrol levels were well high. We only started to panic a little when our GPS decided to take us on a route that would  avoid all highways  and we travelled through what we called "Little Italy" because of the narrow, cobblestone, windy roads. Fortunately, we rectified this setting before dark but by then our best laid plans of seeing the City by daylight had past. Instead we saw an (almost) pitch b

Once the last of the trifle leftovers were cleaned away, we took a few days to lay low and..  Read(ing): Santa Paws by Nicholas Edwards. It is a Christmas time book but the kids are engrossed - ah, the luxury/value/sacrifice of reading at bedtime! Watched: Mamma Mia 2 with all the family -  singalong songs and all. Not as great as the first one, in my opinion, I mean... Meryl Streep. But watching DH cringe with musical theatre misery and yet he still volunteered it (and didn't complain) for the sake of our movie night memories, made us all very glad.   Following: Kiara Mun-Gavin's miraculous story. A car and bike accident on Christmas Eve, devastating injuries and this young girl's fight. You can read it here  https://m.facebook.com/jacimungavin1/ Visited: Bradford on Sunday and enjoyed seeing a lot more snow up North. Tasty lunch followed by homemade dessert pies, family board games all set in a toasty log cabin filled my cup to overflowing...plus, the drive home was just