And Then I Cried...

 We always knew that this Christmas was not going to be anyway near a normal one...

And I was OK with that...

Eldest and her family who live next door were coming for dinner...

And youngest was coming for tea, she had to work in the morning and again on Boxing Day...

Then just as we were sitting down to roast beef...not turkey...I'm saving that for when we can all be together...

Youngest and her caveman came in to announce she'd finished work a bit early, but actually they wouldn't be coming to tea after all...they were visiting his mother and her husband and dinner was to be much later than they first thought...

I was OK with this...we are lucky in that for childcare we are in a bubble...there is no way either of us can take care of the children on both days required due to our own work commitments...

There was no way Sonshine and his partner could have travelled down...and we asked them not to way before the cancelled Christmas news...

It was OK...Christmas comes whatever...

Then the other day I had a message from Sonshine with a photo...

They had had snow, and were making snow pancakes...

Now when my children were younger they loved to watch Brambly Hedge...

And the mice had snow pancakes for breakfast when it snowed...

We adopted the name...no snow required in the cooking...just outside on the ground...

The fact that he had remembered when we've been apart for the most emotionnal time of year had me leaking from the eyes...

~

Yesterday our tree nearly became a casualty of my frustrations...

I had a particularly nasty journey home from work in the snow and ice on New Years Eve...

My workplace is really out in the back of beyond...

And I have to drive across very high ground which always gets the worst of any weather...

I had nearly lost the car on the way to work at 2:30, and had managed for the first time ever to forget my phone, so I was rather nervous making the journey home...

Mostly in second gear...

It took just over 40 minutes, and I was literally shaking when I eventually opened our cottage door...

My evening meal was eventually consumed by me jsut after 11pm...

I didn't take my break so I could leave half an hour earlier...

However, instead of ousting the tree, I merely pushed it to a slightly new location, it is still in good condition,  despite the kittens running underneath it and occasionally taking a swipe at the baubles...

It is smelling lovely, and as I couldn't smell it before I am grateful I decided to keep it up...

I have another late shift today, and the current temperature is minus 4.4...

Wellies and phone will be coming with me, and I may be uttering a few words to him upstairs before I set off if you get what I mean!

However right now I am going to light the woodburner and do a little blog catch up reading...

Life might not be very exciting, but it has been filled with mundane tasks such as bringing home a load of logs, baking and cleaning...

Blessings, J. x