Two nights, lots of hugs and the thespians....

After months of upset and not cracking it, Anna has been a superstar and has been dry for the last two nights. She is a very proud girl and is delighted. Go on Wiggle, go for the third in a row! After several aborted attempts Amy and I just stopped fretting and forgot about it until she was ready and she may well now be.

Phone conversations with the girls have been a delight this week as they have been telling me about their parts in their school plays. Anna is going to be the Innkeeper's wife and is full of protest as she tells me she does not want to get married. She was very annoyed when I told her if she was a wife, she was already married! Lucy is going to be an Elf this year. I am not one hundred percent sure, but was there an Elf in the story of the baby Jesus? Only time will tell. I came home last night and the welcome I got was lovely. I got hugs, kisses, a make over, my body measured (don't ask), doctored and told several times how much my girls loved me and missed me. What more can a guy ask for....

Pudsey Day!

In celebration of Children in Need day Anna spent some time drawing a picture of Pudsey to show her teacher on Monday. She's a lucky woman! She told me it was for 'Need in Children'! Great picture Wiggle! I love the picture and I really loved the cuddles when I got home today. Looking forward to a weekend with my girls...

A house that is truely home.....

Houses have been a huge part of family life this week. Grandma moved house yesterday and it was an emotional day, leaving behind well over forty years of memories. Granny and Grandpa also moved this week and left their beloved house. Both very significant events in every body's life and difficult days to cope with. This got me thinking. It is not the bricks and mortar that should carry the memories, yet what went on within. Wherever we move to, we will always have those. I will remember the girls bedroom from this house for example and all the fun they had sharing a room, but the special memory has been watching their bond as sisters flourish as a result of this, not the room. I stood outside an hour ago and watched Amy and the girls through the kitchen window (yes - I was having a fag!) as they chatted and decorated cakes. It was a magical sight and it was nothing to do with the house. They were smiling and giggling. Amy was teaching them and stroking their hair as she spoke. It was a perfect picture of a mother and her two daughters, framed through the window of our house. This is when it struck me. When I work away, I don't miss the house, or my own bed - there will always be another bed to sleep in or another house to live in. It's the people that live there that make it special. I was very sad to see Grandma's connection with Berry Hall finally end yesterday, but I would be even more sad to loose Grandma or watch Amy go through the pain of loosing her parents. So let's forget the houses and as we push towards Christmas remember that houses last for potentially hundreds of years and continue to be enjoyed by generations of families to  come. Our families belong to us just once in a lifetime and I quite simply love mine to bits....

Hama time!

My half term holiday with Amy and the girls has been a complete disaster with work once again consuming all my time until today which has been heavenly. Whilst Amy was beavering away in the study and marking some poor children's work armed with a viscous red pen, the girls and I played for hours with hama beads. I made a rocket, Lucy a squirrel and Anna a rainbow square. I loved this time with them, we played and nattered for nearly two hours. Our house has indeed been a hive of industry this weekend with two sittings of cake making for nursery fund raising, Anna helping with the hoovering and Lucy directing operations from the comfort of her arm chair. Comment of the week. Lucy got up this evening and revealed that she had been sitting on her Disney cards for some time and they had 'gone up her bum! She has class my girl....