Starting point

This is the view this afternoon from the kitchen window. In the foreground are some winter crocuses, then back through dead brambles and bits of an elder tree, then on to the million saplings we need to dig out and the big trees at the back (which aren't ours, but part of the woods that go around all our houses). In fact, I'm not altogether sure how much of this is our garden, at some point I will have to get out there with a big measuring tape and work it out. Let's see if this view has changed much in a year or so!

Today was mostly about the school Christmas show. The kids put on a fantastic show, all based around a medieval theme. I'm not sure we got the full benefit of the story, it mostly being spoken in quiet French by small children, but it certainly looked like a lot of fun and the costumes were fantastic (handy having a kid at the school whose mum is a costume designer!) Conor was a knight and won a jousting contest, and Katherine was a princess who chased an animal that might have been a fox, or a bear. Not sure really.

Afterwards Pere Noel arrived and Conor just looked enchanted - though he later told me that that wasn't the real Father Christmas because he could see his black beard under the fake white one. I'm unsure whether Conor still 'believes' or not, and don't want to ask really. Later there was more chocolate log than I've ever seen before, and a lot of fighting with sticks outside for the kids.

And now Mr B is building shelving upstairs, the kids are fighting over which video to watch and I'm off to introduce the homework option into the debate.