Happy New Year!

I appreciate I’m a little late to the party, but doesn’t it feel like this year is getting up to a bit of a slow start? Or is that just me? Maybe it’s just that January feeling, and it doesn’t help that it’s been so blinking cold!

I managed to have a proper break from all worky stuff over Christmas and New Year. It was definitely a strange one, without being able to see anyone from outside our household, but, thankfully, we all like each other! We made up for it by buying an extra huge tree and putting Michael Buble on repeat. Lots of board games were played and crafting done, we watched plenty of movies ranging from Mission Impossible to Despicable Me, walked the dogs loads, read new books, and ate all the good food.

So this was our first week back to normality, such as it is at the moment, and I was looking forward to it. By New Year’s I had the decorations down and was champing at the bit to get back to my manuscript and teaching my kids. I adore Christmas and all that it entails, but I also love our regular routine, and I was missing it.

I don’t think we’ve done too badly for our first proper week of 2021 – the boys worked hard, I’ve managed to get on the treadmill more than I expected, I had an admin day so feel on top of bills etc, and I’ve begun working through an amazing course written by a friend of mine which aims to help with positive thinking and focussing on working towards the important goals in your life. Oh, and it’s so good to be eating less chocolate and cheese! We also had a really good family walk yesterday in the woods near us and have a board game evening planned for tonight after a roast.

On the downside, I haven’t managed as much writing as I would have liked, but I will give myself some grace with that, and our boiler’s water tank basically exploded yesterday, leaking 120 litres of water through the ceiling! Not a fun way to spend a Saturday morning, but, thankfully, we have a good plumber who came out straight away and it should be all sorted soon.

I hope you all had a peaceful Christmas and New Year and were able to speak to or video call loved ones, even if you weren’t able to be together. I’m sure we’ll appreciate next Christmas all the more for missing out a little this year.

Emma x