Jack Frost

Today it was freezing cold all day - about -4 I think. The result was a beautiful hoar frost that lasted all day, a perfect photo opportunity :-)

I have failed miserably with lots of my new years resolutions - most notably keeping up with this photo journal! The batteries died in the camera, I lost the camera for several days and then there were lots of days when I just didn't get time... hopeless!

I have, however, started an ambitious new routine with my two wayward children in the hopes that they will go to bed at a more reasonable hour, thus leaving me with time to do pleasurable things like keeping up with blipfoto, taking up cross stitch again and devouring more books on my kindle. This got off to a good start, we had a whole 2 days of excellent behaviour and bedtimes before 9pm. Unfortunately I was too busy with another new years resolution - operation clean out my room - to do anything other than wade through bin bags of junk. The result was a clean, tidy, re-organised room though so it's not all bad.

After that it started going downhill again and I've been back to crashing out when the kids batteries eventually die down - somewhere between half 9 and 10pm after lots of arguing and fuss. Cue some back-up in the form of Gill on facetime and a very productive visit from the school nurse and we have a brand new shiny routine and a new reward chart. Tonight they both followed it happily and fell asleep well before 9pm - amazing! Now all I have to do is maintain it and sanity will be restored... well, sort of.

Fingers crossed this is the start of a new chapter and I'll posting here again very soon (preferably tomorrow!)