Christmas comes early...

So if we thought that 2016 started with a bang with massive house alterations, it looks like 2017 is going to start with a huge KABOOM as the Children's Panel has just agreed the next stage of our adoption journey. Niomi is a wonderful little girl who is nearly 2 - and we just can't wait for her to be part of our lives. The process of her moving to us will start early in January, and she'll have fully moved to us by the middle of the month. I'll post more as we go on, but suffice to say for now, we are completely delighted at our early Christmas present - truly the best surprise ever 😊😊😊.

A very Merry Christmas to you all...N, T and E x

A Christmas angel...

My own wee Santa

Swapping roles to be Rudolf

Every year I try and do a Daddy/Daughter Christmas Day in the run up to the event itself. And this year's had a strict itinerary which got followed to the letter.

9.30am Shove Mummy out the door on a spa day, with instructions not to come back till late.

9.31am Cushion and blanket the lounge to make cosy/comfy seating and watch "The Polar Express".

11.12am Start making my Grandma's famous date krispie recipe with Emily. 

11.33am Head out to Lidl to do Christmas shop for the local foodbank. Slight jealous jelly incident with Emily, but other than that all purchases happily sent to a good cause.

12.23pm Lunch. Not much eaten as excitement building for afternoon's events.

12.34 to 1.23pm Jumping School and Cushion Attack.

1.24pm Head to train station ridiculously early as Supreme Being is intensely excited about trip to Glasgow. Promised that "it's OK to be early Daddy - we can play games". I'm not convinced.

1.31 to 1.51pm A very long 20 mins of eye-spy with 4 year old jumping up and down with excitement.

2.06 to 3.15pm Tour of festive market, spotting 2 ginormous Christmas trees and whizz round on the merry-go-round

Delight on the merry-go-round

3.15 to 4.06pm Theatre trip to see "The Night After Christmas" (highly recommended for 3-6 year olds). Massive snacking of mini-marshmallows throughout (don't tell Mummy) on account of poor lunch effort.

4.06 to 4.15pm Massive sprint across town with flagging 4 year-old on shoulders "Don't worry if we miss it Daddy, we can get the next one." (It was an hour to wait - too long for eye-spy). We made it - just.

4.37 to 6.02pm Chicken and chips - Emily's favourite. 

6.02 to 6.28pm "Daddy I'm sooo tired. Can I watch Peter Rabbit? Pleeeeeease". Of course.

6.28pm Storytime.

7.03pm Bed and sleep.

Daddy/Daughter Christmas Day done. Major success - celebratory bottle of beer drunk.

And then 5 days later, my little angel was an angel in the nursery nativity. Tear in eye at an oscar-winning performance. Wonderful. Boy am I excited about Christmas this year.

Vidoeclip: We wish you a Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone

The most wonderful time of the year...

As you know I LOVE Christmas. And our festivities are already well underway having started on the last weekend in November with the annual trip to buy the Christmas tree. It was a pretty tight schedule this year as the project where we go opened at 3pm, and we needed to be back for Kirkintilloch lights switch on at 5pm...plus we had to squeeze in some post tree buying mulled wine/mince pies with friends and neighbours. But we did it...well over 20ft of green needle clad joy was purchased by 3 families, plenty of stollen and mince pies consumed, plus a few mugs of warming spiced wine to give us a nice glow; and we still made the lights and subsequent fireworks with minutes to spare.

Emi doing her bit

Videoclip: Lights switch on!!

And then it really all began. The next day was Christmas tunes all day as stir-up Sunday meant the pudding got made with everyone having three wishes each (Emily was not content with one). And then it was a week of Christmas craft making and excited debate on Christmas, before December began with a bang as we decorated the house and brought light to the dark winter months. The festive season can just bring out so much joy and excitement if you can avoid the commercialism of it all.

We've done Victorian Santa, made masses of decorations including a brilliant 'stick' tree, started prepping and freezing lots of food, but most importantly, we've spent some wonderful time as a family just indulging our 'inner children' and our Supreme Being. It's brought a hearty glow to winter darkness and Emily really is getting into the full Christmas swing. The highlight for me so far was Emily meeting a wonderful Santa and Mrs Claus at our Victorian Christmas event. It was exactly as it should have been - just a lovely noncommercial and traditional experience. Last year Emily was terrified of Santa but now she's really starting to embrace his magical self...there's going to be one very excited Supreme Being by the time we get to Christmas Eve as there's lots more still to come!!

Stir-up Sunday

Videoclip: What happens at Christmas

Videoclip: Christmas deliveries

 The tree is up!

Emily, Santa and Mrs Claus

Jumping school...

On the plus side 4 year-olds are easy to entertain - any old nonsense game will do provided you are not fussed about rules (very arbitrary at present). The down side is though they have a very short attention span so you need lots and lots and lots of quick and easy ideas to keep them going.

Every weekday evening I am faced with this challenge. How to entertain an over-tired but full of food 4 year-old for a minimum of 30 mins before storytime. In summer it was easy - just run around the garden. But now, with the onset of winter, it has become much more tricky. And so...I invented Jumping School!

The first rule of Jumping School: You do not talk about Jumping School 

The second rule of Jumping School: No Walking.

The third rule of Jumping School: Only Jumping allowed.

Simple.

Now you might think that jumping repeatedly over piles of cushions isn't that great. But then you're not 4. And it's certainly passed my evenings for the past 3 weeks - so don't knock it till you've tried it, that's what I say. And no matter what - the Supreme Being loves it!! And that's good enough for me...

Videoclip: Jumping School

Peddling like crazy...

The last few weeks have all been a bit frantic. There's been Halloween, Bonfire Night, Emily's 4th Birthday and an unfortunate 'non-decision' on the adoption. It has been a truly wonderful few weeks though as there's been more than enough great experiences and lovely social memories to add to the many, many that make up our bulging family memory bank.

It's been a stonkingly, good, leaf-crunching autumn. The mild yet fair weather has meant we've spent much time out of doors and there's been plenty of biking activity all round. My morning commute has been particularly stunning at times...although I had been hoping I wouldn't have to do it all winter with adoption leave seeming imminent. Unfortunately the panel couldn't come to a decision, so it looks like we'll be back there either later in the year or early 2017. Slightly frustrating, but we really do have so much to be thankful for that it hasn't dampened our spirits.

The morning rush hour

So even though the new dawn didn't quite rise how we hoped in time for Christmas, Emily has been as ever leaping on apace. Her nursery school parents session gave us a glowing report and she clearly loves to learn. We've been out and about and she's taught herself to swing. She enjoyed Halloween and turned it from the macabre to 'fairy stylee'. In fact princesses and fairies are definitely a major feature in her life. Bonfire Night and fireworks were also a big hit (much improved from last year), and we had a grand 'old-fashioned' bonfire bash at the neighbours. And finally her 4th birthday was simply lovely, with my personal highlight being she got a 'new' (well obviously second-hand) pedal bike - which she mastered within days. Since then she's been peddling like crazy, and I've been one proud Dad.

 Princess-tastic

Scary Fairy Pumpkin House

Birthday shawl handmade by Chloe

Birthday cake handmade by Mummy

 Birthday bike handcleaned by Daddy 

And Birthday bash in full swing

Videoclip: Learning to swing in full swing

Videoclip: Peddling like crazy

Are rainbow's lucky? Let's hope so...

Bring on the girls...

Room for another little one?

There's a lot of girls in my life, and with any luck there'll soon be another one - so watch this space... But in the meantime - I've been trying to figure out some fundamental girl-based questions:

1. How do girls all seem to end up enjoying dressing up as 'princesses' not 'pirates', no matter how hard you try to avoid it?
2. And how do they also seem to all end up liking red and pink, no matter how much you try to colour control your life?
3. And why is ballet so appealing to young girls no matter how much you role model your best funk steps?

It seems there are some things that are just really hard to control in today's world, despite the best attempts to bring gender neutrality. I guess it's a bit like trying to stop all boys playing with swords and soldiers. I do remember in my years in Africa though it wasn't quite so clear cut, so clearly some of it is to do with the trappings of our modern lives.

All princessed up again

Emily loves her cousins Rosie and Abbie, and we recently descended on North Berwick for Rosie's 10th birthday (where did those years go!). As usual we had a grand old time and the girls just get along so well it makes life easy for us all. The birthday was a big success and the delight on the face of Rosie when she opened her telescope from John's Dad was a face that says a thousand words. Truly lovely...

 Cousinly love

 Telescopic delight

 More telescopic delight

 10 candles and a lot of blowing

The weather was grand, so Dad's and girls hit the beach for sandcastles and rock jumping. And our trip to North Berwick means we got to bring back Emily's new winter wardrobe. Endless hand-me-downs mean the Supreme Being has a plentiful free stockpile of clothes...enough to pass on to a little sister.

 All the big girls got in on the action

 Flying supreme across the sand

Trying on all the winter wardrobe at once

The next few weeks are big ones for us on the adoption front. So fingers crossed and send us your positive vibes that they all go well. Will keep you posted blogging stylee...

Banchory firsts...

Banchory from on high

And so following on from the hectic family weekend in Crieff, we managed to squeeze a couple of nights in our own beds before depositing ourselves on the in-laws once more in Banchory. They'd seen us coming though and had a couple of prior commitments - so we had to fend for ourselves for once! Emily wouldn't let Nana and Baba get away that easily though and she still ran them ragged when she got the chance...

We still managed a fun-packed 4 days though - with the usual trips to Drum and Crathes Castle, garden centres and coffee shops, playparks galore and other adventures. The supreme being was once again in her element. We discovered hill-rolling which was a hit, and she even went solo on her pedal bike for the first time (if only for a few metres). This highlight was only topped by Emily's first hill ascent - Scolty Hill at 299m. Not bad for someone with tiny legs :-). It was a slightly drawn out affair along the lines of the first 10 mins going well, then tiredness kicked in, then chocolate kicked in, then burst of sugar-induced energy to summit, then chocolate crash at summit, then minor grumping on way down with parental distracting techniques tested to limit, to a final 10 minutes of world-ending tiredness and tears. Followed by immediate perking up with the promise of lunch. Not that dissimilar to some of my munro efforts really.

 Showing Emily how it's done

 And then she was off!

 Competitive outdoor snakes and ladders

 A born winner!

Videoclip: Hill-rolling

 The first great ascent commences

Still enjoying it 10 minutes in

First summit success (albeit we look happier than the Supreme Being)!

Nana-tastic...

A wonderful thing is a Nana,

A Nana's a wonderful thing,

She's lovely, smiley, kind and cheery

She's always fun, fun, fun.

But the most wonderful thing about Nana is...

She's the only one :-)

All the grandkids (and us big kids) love Nana. She really is one of a kind. It was her 70th Birthday recently, but you'd never believe she was 70 given the never-ending energy she has. I really hope I have as much energy and joie de vivre when I am 70 - it's just infectious when you're around her.

It seems she was always fun!

And for her grand birthday we all celebrated in grand style with a weekend away at Crieff Hydro. It was another wonderful Gedik affair with plenty of food, laughter and special memories. The grandkids loved it, and they're just at a great age for all getting along together. Most importantly Nana loved it too. The sun shone pretty much all weekend, we smiled the whole time, and there was even some very special slow dancing. 

A very Happy Birthday to a wonderfully young lady :-).

 Joining in the fun pt 1

 Joining in the fun pt 2

 Mum and Daughters

Nana and Grandkids

Nana and Supreme Being

Videoclip: Slow dance special

Fruits of our labours...

Spoiler alert: If you don't like gardening then don't read on...

Way back in March the Supreme Being and I started a project to transform the garden. We planted many, many, many plants. There was lupins, delphiniums, phlox and gaillardia. There was rudbeckia, heleniums, eryngium and echinacea. And that was just a few of the flowers that got planted...There was plums, apples, cherries, kale, spinach and beans. And that was just some of the fruit and veg. We hacked, dug, transplanted, raked and watered. And that was just some of the toil we put in.

But do you know what? It nearly all grew :-). And this summer has been an bountiful display of colour and tasty delights. Each week has seen a different slant on what is an ever-changing picture. I'm hooked.

And it's got me thinking...there could be so much more to be done. I think the fruits of this years labours are just the start of our gardening odyssey. Gardener's Question Time here we come :-).

 The cottage garden in the making

 And the wildflower meadow wasn't bad either

Me and ma garden helper