Worryingly I seem to have slipped 4 days without adding anything to this blog. Where did it all go?

Day one - Saturday.
This was taken up by an expression of my creative and culinary skills. Though a word of warning to the masses, the magic golden coin maker is probably not something you want to buy for a 3 year old. Sam decided that Saturday would be the day we tried out this Xmas present he and his sister had been given. After 10 minutes of careful melting and 40 more minutes of setting, wrapping and pressing we finally had our first golden coin. Only to be greeted by the immortal words "Can I Eat it?" and in 20 seconds it was gone. Phoebe on the other hand had been given a martian alien maker kit for Xmas. Can't say we don't let our kids have diverse presents! We had assumed it was a sweetie maker though to my disgust I found that chomping on a recently formed alien, it coats your mouth with a tasteless layer of slowly setting rubber. Still at least I didn't let the kids find this out, we'd never have heard the last of it.

I did say my culinary skills were put to good use didn't I? Well Bernard Matthews did have a small part to pay. The dinosaurs, mash and spaghetti hoops did go down a treat. The plan was to progress to carbonara (from scratch) for tea.

Day Two - Sunday.
We spent the most of Saturday night disgusing working on the family tree and not vegging in front of the idiot box. After chatting with both sets of parents we suddenly realised just how appaulling infant mortality used to be. Everywhere in the family there seemed to be parents with tens of kids, most of whom died at a young age. Not sure how we slept on Saturday night but we did and woke up bright and bushy on Sunday with a eye on the park. I popped over to retrieve Sam's bike from my in-laws to be greeted by my father-in-law bouncing in shouting "Her name was Nellie!" at the top of his voice. The name of one of his aunts had eluded him the night before and it pains me to think he'd spent all that time on one name. This may take longer than we thought as Ty is still quite sharp compared to the rest of the tools in the box.

Still off to the park we went. Sam and Phoebe, Sally and I all bundled up enjoying the snow (yes it was slightly snowing but not so much as you'd really notice). Phoebs trundled off on her new Barbie scooter under strict instructions not to break out the lip gloss from her secret hidden draw. Sam on the other hand sat on his bike for about 6 feet and promptly said he'd had enough. We took turns in pushing the bike in the vane hope that he'd change his mind whilst running after his sister. He did keep the helmet on after all.

Yet more family tree nonsense ensued for the rest of the day, that is after I'd finally got all the ingredients for the carbonara I'd planned for the previous night. Sally said it was not my best, though since I've only made it twice before I'm not sure how to take that.

Day Three - Monday
Back to work again. Even though I'd been "in work" between Christmas and New Year, then in again on the Friday I did feel like I was returning after a long break. Strange that!

I finally got to discuss the merits of Matt Smith as the new lead in Doctor Who for 2010 with Jim at work. I think we settled on "best wait and see what he's like" as our considered opinion, rather than making our minds up off what we'd seen him in already. Though since we'd not seen him in anything comments about his hair and the shape of his head were all we could come up with. Men can be as bad as old women sometimes, perhaps worse.

Day Four - Today, Tuesday
And finally I can catch up and reflect on another day in the garage, sorry I mean office. I realised why yesterday felt like coming back to work after a long break. It was the realisation that the kids were back in school today and that I could come back into the house and make a cup of tea in piece and quiet. Though when I did come in after the kids came home from school, I was surprised to see Phoebe reading the paper and point out to Sally who had died. Not sure what worries me more; that she's 6 and reading the paper, or that the paper she's reading is the Daily Mail. I think we're going to invest in a subscription to "First News".

So now I'm back on the lappie and finishing off a bit of writing for work. Hate writing, which is one of the reason why I'm forcing myself to do this blog. I figure if I can get over this it'll help with other things. Yes Sally, I know there are spelling and grammar errors in here. I did fail English twice (if you count <C grade as a fail).

If I can't get that sorted I may have to call my own bluff and switch careers into something that doesn't involve writing. Carpentry might be good, Sally's dad seems to be able to knock up some nice pieces now he'd retired, so how hard can it be?