Mid-term break

It hardly seems the boys have been back to school five minutes and already they have a week's holiday! After a busy little term where the boys were very much into their Scottish roots, centred on Burns Night in January, Sharon has to keep them entertained for the mid-term holiday. We had a good start with a visit to the St. Johns' house on Saturday afternoon. The boys generally have a good time with Alex and Louis while we get to sit down with Brian and Lucy. As Sharon said, we don't get too many invitations as a family these days as we invade rather than visit! After a couple of sittings (one for the children, one for the adults) we returned home pleasantly full.

Yesterday was good too. Sharon and I secured a rare long lie, the boys being occupied electronically and not plaguing us with requests for food, then Sharon met Alana in town. I came in with the boys and we met up in the museum. The lads had a grand time in the science bit as usual and then explored one of the new areas behind the Millenium Clock. Next we went for lunch in the Assembly Bar round the back of the museum in Lothian St. It was very good value with three "small plates" for a fiver. Ideal for the kids. Sharon and I had a decent meal too and the boys had a great time playing round various couches and chairs. It wasn't too busy so they had the run of the place. And they played AC/DC's Powerage and For Those About To Rock albums back to back. What's not to like!?

Sharon took Sean and Angus back into the museum while I went to the Meadows playpark with the middle two. The weather has been pleasantly mild of late (while England has been deep into minus temperatures - ha ha!) and it was a great afternoon for Finn and Rowan to run themselves ragged. It's good to see Finn being a bit more active. Sometimes he can be a bit reluctant to expend energy. He took the opportunity to go to Hillend with Miriam and Sean last weekend so maybe he's starting to enjoy the physical side of life a bit more.

Talking of exercise, Sharon has been missing her running. Her foot is much better but it'll still be a good while before she can venture out on a jog. She contented herself with running me ragged last night instead, with some kettle bell core exercise and cardio-vascular work. I can't deny I need to get fitter but I find no pleasure in training and never have. My gout flared up too shortly afterwards so I'm contending with a sore foot and very stiff limbs today.

Jump start January

A New Year and a fresh start at work. I've survived the latest round of redundancies, the enterprise architecture team being viewed as providing a key function in the company's quest to realise strategic goals. But the Group Technology Direction department of which EA was a part has been disbanded and the manager made redundant. We're anticipating a new Chief Architect to lead us in March so we have another period of uncertainty to cover until then. It's increasingly apparent I work for a plc rather than an old-fasioned mutual insurer.

The Lasts popped in last Sunday. It was good to see them and prompted Finn, as ever, into much silliness with Morven, sticking coloured spotty stickers all over his face as "chickenpox." Needless to say I was picking them off carpets, slippers and clothes for the following few days.

Sharon has been getting back into running and Paul was trying to persuade her to target the Grangemouth 10k early in the year. In an effort to join Sharon in her quest for fitness (she had a good 2010 with her personal trainer and is keen to maintain and improve on that in 2011), I have embarked on the KettleWorx course of Core, Cardio and Resistance training using a KettleBell weight. I have reached the point where my appreciation of the need to get fitter has overcome my loathing of doing organised exercise. I doubt you'll see me in a gym (ever!) but I'm prepared to do the three times a week, 25 minute KettleWorx workouts as they seem to target the areas I really need to improve on, especially to offset the detrimental effects of coeliac disease and asthma.

The boys seem to have had an extra long Christmas break. I took Finn and Rowan for a swim on Tuesday, my last day off, and Sean has had a couple of days round at friends' houses, but the Christmas present pile has been well worked down. Sean has had fun with his electronics set which is much more plug and play than the one I had as a boy. That one required wires to connect spring terminals with a much more physical view of the resistors, capacitors and transistors. Bad memories of my second year Uni Electrionics module!

Angus is off the bottle. He was perfectly content with it before bedtime, much longer than the others it seems, but that was probably due to us not breaking the habit. So we're breaking it now. His bottom two molars have erupted so we expect him to be ploughing into raw steak soon.

Sharon hosted a reward dinner on Saturday night which went on into the small hours of Sunday morning. Fortunately I had the ear plugs in! The snow returned this weekend with a hard frost but it didn't prevent Hannah and I having a brisk Sunday morning walk up to Swanston village which looked very picturesque in the wintry landscape. Sharon and I then enjoyed a rare lazy afternoon, the boys playing amongst themselves (which they do very well when the mood takes them) while we watched a couple of films on the telly and cuddled up on the couch.