First Blog Post of 2018 – An update on our Christmas, NYE and the year ahead.

I’m probably a bit late in saying HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone who reads my blog! 

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. And since I took a bit of a break from blogging over the Christmas and New Year period, I thought I’d write a bit of an update post now.

We had a lovely Christmas. We visited family and very good friends in the last few days leading up to Christmas and it made me realise how I want to see them all much more this year. Now the children are a bit older, it was so lovely seeing them play with their cousins and they’ve not really had that before. Up until the twins turned 4 years old, they were only really interested in playing with each other. Thanks to nursery and school, they are so much more sociable now. So this year I want to make a conscious effort to see friends and family more.

Christmas day we had our usual routine. Around 9am the children woke up and brought their stockings from Santa into our room to open. It was extra special this year as Bear was excited too and able to open his presents by himself. We went downstairs for our traditional breakfast of smoked salmon and cream cheese blinis (my girls absolutely LOVE them). Then it was time for the main presents. We bought Bear and the twins new scooters and Bunny a new Lego set as their big presents from us. The four of them were utterly spoilt (as usual) and had a lovely day. The highlight of Christmas for me, is always seeing their smiley faces, being surrounded by family and all the yummy seasonal food. My mum and stepdad came over to share Christmas with us too and we all played games in the afternoon.

On Boxing day, I started feeling poorly and the following two nights I didn’t get any sleep due to agonising heartburn and reflux. I ended up at the doctors with a prescription for reflux medication which I have to take for four weeks. This was all very out of the ordinary as I have never suffered with reflux or heartburn before, but I’d put the pain on a par with when I was in hospital with HELLP Syndrome and a failing liver. Thankfully the pain has subsided now but unfortunately the reflux has damaged my throat, so even now, nearly three weeks later, I still have a sore throat and a bad cough. 

We didn’t really do a lot for New Year’s Eve, and to be honest, it’s been about a decade since I did anything for NYE. Funnily enough, once you are a parent, you discover that that’s the one night of the year where no family member will step forward and offer to babysit! We just had a friend over to play a friendly (non-gambling) game of poker. I won – of course (should have put money on it)!

We also enjoyed two lots of snow – one before Christmas and one after. I LOVE the snow and it brings out my inner child. So obviously we had to go out and play in it. I think I played in the snow more than the children did!

So now we are back at work, the children are back at school, gymnastics, dance, toddler group and normal life has resumed. As much as we had a lovely Christmas, I love our normal life too.

We had some great holidays and weekends away in 2017 but the highlights of the year:

The man I love proposed to me. My sweet, generous, gorgeous, funny, brilliant “Tinderboy“. We got married in Scotland, where we had a beautiful quiet wedding and a noisy but brilliant party with all our friends and family when we got back home.

But also… as a family we had some really shitty tough times last year that we can’t and don’t want to blog about. Difficulties that hit us hard financially and emotionally. A battle that is ongoing and we may or may not decide to blog about it later in the year. Difficulties that have made us tougher and stronger as a family unit and have proved that my husband and I are solid, as we have stuck together through it all.

We’ve decided though, through the power of positive thinking, that 2018 is going to be our year. This is going to be the year we win the fight and find our good karma. We deserve some good luck now and that’s what we are looking forward to.

Looking to the year ahead, we don’t really have any new years resolutions as such, but we have quite an impressive to-do list. We are hoping that this is the year our extension will be completed and then we will be able to have a go a landscaping our garden and putting a driveway in. Then to reshuffle and redecorate the children’s rooms, and finally to tackle the kitchen and bathroom renovations, until we have a home we are happy with and plan to stay in for the foreseeable future. I am hoping to make a bloody good start on writing my book and would like to end 2018 completely debt free. We are also hoping to somehow cram in a few holidays – at least one hot country and to actually get around to having our much awaited honeymoon!

So what were your highlights of 2017? What are you looking forward to in 2018? I love receiving comments from readers, so do please leave yours below.