Wednesday 16th was the start of half term for Tom & Lily so as Nick had the week off work as well we drove up to Glenshee for a day on the slopes.
Not sure if you can see from the photos or not but Lily doesn' t look too happy, this was her first introduction to Poma's or button lifts and T bars. Needless to say it didn't go too well and she fell off and was dragged a few times before getting the hang of them!

Also, being Scotland it was a total whiteout at the top of the mountain so that made the skiing difficult too. After a few hours Lily & I stopped and left the boys to it for another hour before we all jumped back in the car for the drive home. Then on Friday Nick & Tom went off for a hill walk on the Lomond Hills whilst Lily & I took it easy at home.

We had a quiet weekend and week this week culminating in much excitement today as Prince William & Kate were in town and Tom had been chosen by his Headmistress, along with Sara, to present Kate with a bouquet of flowers. How fantastic is that?

Touched by the future King of England, I was able to stand in a prime spot in front of all the press photographers and take pictures and then when Wills & Kate went on walkabout I managed to blag one of the photographers ladders so I was above everyone standing in the crowd and was able to take some fabulous shots of William as he made his way along the
crowds of people.

What a fantastic day, I'm still on a high and I didn't even get to talk or shake hands with him. Oh and Tom was also on the ITV & STV news (albeit in a blink and you'll miss it kind of way!)

We went to the Thai Restaurant for dinner on the 4th along with a few friends from Nick's work and had a delicious meal. Then it was a quiet weekend for all. This last week we had Mark from work over for dinner on Thursday and we had a fabulous home made beef stew and pudding courtesy of M&S.
On Saturday Tom went to University for the day - he had been selected to go to Space School which is run by the University of St Andrews and involves learning about Physics, Astronomy, Geosciences, Psychology, Chemistry etc over a selection of 6 Saturdays between now and June. It then culminates in a 3 day event in June (missing school) with guest speakers and actual astronauts from NASA coming over to talk to the children. How fantastic is that? Naturally Tom is 'over the moon' about the whole thing and to make it even better for him, Gregg (his BFF!) got selected from his school to go too.
So while Tom was at space school, mum & dad arrived (it was my mum's birthday on the 11th) and Nick took dad for a round of golf and Lily, mum & I went to visit Cambo Estates for a walk

among the snowdrops - mum's favourite flower and Cambo Estate is famous for its display in spring. www.camboestates.com It is a beautiful garden with some lovely sculptures and

pigs!

We ran out of time to walk through the woods down to the beach but we had fun all the same, Lily's friend Cade came along with us too.

After that I dropped them all off at home, had a quick treasure hunt with Cade & Lily and then went off to pick up Tom & Gregg. They had had a fabulous time and are looking forward to the next one in a couple of weeks time. I dropped the boys off at Greg's and then it was back home to hunt for dinosaurs in the garden. I managed to find all but 2 of them and Cade & Lily couldn't remember where they had put them so we may or may not stumble across them at some point in the future. All too soon it was 5pm so I took Cade home and collected Tom and then it was home for the night and a nice glass of wine and meal with mum & dad. Salmon for dinner and leftover M&S pud. Yum.

We haven't been doing a whole lot really during January, I have to say I'm glad it's over and we're into February now.
Henry, Christine and their children, David & Sarah came round to lunch a couple of Sundays ago and Nick and I were at the RAF Burns night last Friday. I drove to that as I was out on the Thursday with some girlie friends and we all got rather drunk and stayed out very late. We had a great night though!
And apart from that all we've been doing is catching mice
and repairing punctures on my car.

I got home from work on Thursday with a completely flat tyre, the nice man at Kwik Fit showed me the cause of the damage...a great big drill bit stuck right through the tyre. So there was no repairing that and as well as damaging my tyre beyond repair it damaged my finances beyond repair too. Luckily my overdraft is authorised so no nasty bank charges for me.