Snow!!!!

Firstly, a Happy New Year to you all. I apologise it's a late greeting but hey, better late than never right?

The Family V had a great festive season - Lia was spoiled rotten by Santa but is just a bit too small to understand she needed to make the most of her last christmas as an only child LOL. It shows what a terrible Mum I am that when asked what her favourite present was she will tell you 'sweeties!' Sure, not the bike or the Barbie or anything that cost more than £1, just all the sweets and chocolate she doesn't normally get...

We spent Christmas with my family (my sister and BIL were fantastic hosts as always) and it was nice to be spoiled a bit. Being six months pregnant meant nobody expected me to do anything so I got extra brownie points when I did help out. It was also nice to catch up with the other kids in the family, Lia has three cousins, all younger, and she loves them to bits. The oldest one is now two and a half and a right little chatterbox - her and Lia together really are hard on the ears! My bro's little boy is now 13 months old and running around, he's a real delight and it'll be great when I give him a boy cousin to play with as the others are all girls. The youngest is only a few weeks old but that just meant I got in some baby cuddles too.

We spent New Years at home but with friends round - Lia had her first friend on a sleep over so sleep for me was short. We got to bed around 1.30am and, despite being awake until nearly 11pm, the girls were awake at 6.30am! I was the only one of the three parents left in the house that wasn't hung over (the other dad sensibly headed home around 1am to get a decent kip in his empty house) so I got to be the responsible adult whilst DH and the other Mum suffered.

As for me, I'm fine. Only around 12 weeks to go now, I can't believe how time is flying! To answer Kathy's question yes we do know the sex and it's a boy this time. Lia is so excited and keeps telling me how she was right all along and I was wrong (she was so adamant that she wanted a baby brother that I spent the first 20 weeks trying to convince her it could be a sister just to avoid disappointment).

Health wise I'm doing great - the diabetes makes pregnancy interesting to say the least but, just as I managed with Lia, I'm doing pretty much text book perfect at the moment so I'm getting great reports every time I see my consultant. It'll be another six weeks or so before we start talking birth options though and I know that it's pretty much an elective caesarian or nothing but until it's actually agreed I'm trying not to think about it too much.

So anyway, on to the snow mentioned in the title of this post. We in the UK have been in the grip of a major cold snap for the last week and where we are we had over 12 inches of the white stuff in approx 12 hours a few days ago. I only remember one or two winters as a kid where I saw as much snow as we have now, we've actually been snowed in for three days!

Lia's school has been closed for the last three days and I have not even considered venturing the 20 miles to work. At six months pregnant and being insulin dependent I don't think I should be risking getting stuck anywhere. I did walk to the hospital yesterday for an appointment - it took just over half an hour to get there and I lost count of the number of times I nearly fell as the pavements are just blocks of ice. Thankfully I got there with no mishaps (DH was with me to make sure I was okay) and the route home was a bit less slippy.

So here's some pics of the snow and Lia and her Daddy building a snowman

An arty shot taken about 11pm after six hours of constant snow fall

The garden first thing in the morning after several more hours of snow

The beginning of a snowman...

Can you tell what it is yet?

Getting there...

Where's Daddy?

Here he is!

Yes I do pose for the camera a lot...

Snow wouldn't melt

The three of us!