Happy New Year…

By golly time has gotten away from us hasn’t it I hope you had a wonderful Christmas whatever you were doing.  I was very spoilt by my husband and kids…I was presented with a beautiful MacBook Air So I have been going through this learning curve with it, I love it, and now I am ‘Apple’d out’ with all my appley gadgets  Whatever opportunity I have had I play around on my Mac discovering new things…the control/command function does take a bit of getting used to.

Regarding Clyde our elf…with the kids off school, blogging about Clyde was a bit difficult, so I will just do a quick blast of pictures

Husband received a lovely hamper full of yummy goodies from a client, which Clyde could not resist!

Clyde trying to built his own Christmas Grotto

Brave Clyde

My Favourite…I had a special photo album on my personal Facebook page that had various pics of Clyde and the Kids (for obvious reasons the ones of my kids won’t be published here), lots of family and friends had been following Clyde, and if I had not got a picture up of him I would have a wall full of messages wondering whats happened to him…so, I posted this one on his last night with us and I was hit with lots of messages pleading with Clyde not to leave

This was a special one for the kids I also got lots of pics of them with Clyde saying goodbye to him, the blue child was really upset to see Clyde go back to the North Pole…but, it was short-lived due to the fact that the big red man was not only taking Clyde home but will be arriving with presents.

And boy, did they get presents!! Christmas was a case as for most, a time for over indulging on food and drink, wishing the family would get back to work and school by the 2nd.

I haven’t made any new years resolutions, it was my 1yr anniversary of quitting smoking That I am super proud of, it’s still difficult at times, and boy after the year I have had I don’t know how the heck I managed to stay of the cigarettes!

I look back at the year with much sadness and trauma, between my Bells Palsy, the Rheumatoid Arthritis diagnosis, which was then changed to Lupus, and also the loss of my beautiful fur baby Molly….This year I am determined to make 2012 a better year, obviously those things that happened to me last year were unavoidable, it was going to happen regardless and, although I went through a grieving process with my Lupus diagnosis, towards the end of the year, and mainly thanks to many other Auto-Immune advocates out there, I am learning to live with the illness.  2012 for me continues to be a year where I will keep practicing my taekwondo, and possibly will do another 10k run.

Other than that, I am also starting work next week, I was approached by my TKD instructor, who is rapidly expanding his classes and locations to become his Marketing and IT Manager, he wants to now focus purely on his classes and have a small team work alongside him.  It will be nice to get back into the working environment, and I also get to work during school hours, during school holidays he runs a camp for the kids and my kids go to them anyway so childcare at work is an added bonus

Anyway, whoever you are and wherever you are, I sincerely wish you a happy healthy 2012 and thank you for following me for another year

Elf stuck in MailBox

Santa gave Clyde one simple instruction….’Deliver a Christmas Card to the children, let them know I got their Christmas List’

One simple, simple instruction!

Obviously not easy for an elf!

Catch up with Clyde

Sorry I have been MIA lately, unfortunately, I got hit by the Lupus flare…my wrists were worst hit, and also my left knee, but I ploughed on, what gets me the hardest is the fatigue, so I have been resting up as much as I can.  Although, it does have a knock-on effect, if I sleep too much I end up with migraines, so between the flare, the fatigue and the migraine, I havent been on top form of late.  Thankfully though, the flare didn’t last very long, this is my first winter since my diagnosis, and I have been pretty lucky, I think I am in fact one of these people who deals better with the cooler temperature. We shall see though.

Anyway, last I left you with Clyde, he was chilling it up in the fridge.  The following day we had a bit of an upsetting time with pink child.  As it was Friday, it was ‘Show and Tell day’ so pink child wanted to take some pictures in of Clyde.

All went well, the teacher though Clyde was funny, then, some little spoilt brat proceeds to tell pink child that Clyde is not real, and that he is just a teddy.  If you have ever seen ‘Hand That Rocks The Cradle’ in the scene were crazy ass nanny beats the crap out of a school bully….well, that’s how I was feeling…oh, but reader, it gets better/worse!

One thing with Lupus, and its mainly due to the meds…..I forget things, pretty easily, in fact I will admit I know my memory is not as good as it used to be, and I do not believe it has anything to do with age.  I am not even 40 yet, so it’s either I am generally just a scatterbrain, or, it’s the meds! So I have to input EVERYTHING into my on-the-wall calender, my diary that I carry in my bag, and then into my iPhone.  So, I put a message into my iPhone to Move Clyde at 9:30pm and give me a little alert.

Can I say….Fecking iCloud!!!! Pink child was not feeling great so I stupidly gave her the iPad so she can read one of those interactive story books, then the darn message flashed up….it was bad enough she was still feeling raw after what the brat in school said to her, then she gets that message….she SCREAMED!!! OMG I am surprised other continents never heard her.

The only thing that came out of my mouth was….’Well, we are normally all asleep by now, and maybe, Santa sent a message to Clyde via the iPad (because of course he would!) to tell Clyde to get a move on!  I think disaster was averted.  She calmed down, eventually, after 3 reads of  ’The Elf on the Shelf’ storybook.

So, next morning Pink Child found Clyde chilling on the lap top, he had just finished writing a letter to her.

I know not the best picture, but you get the idea….all was ok with the world as he was chewing on some Jelly Belly’s (Yummm).

Clyde had ‘apparently’ told Santa that he was upset to see Pink Child upset, and because of this, Santa has put the offending brat child on the naughty list…also included was a video from Santa from the Portable North Pole This is a fabulous website…Blue Child thinks it’s so real, he waves to Father Christmas, he was even asked by Santa to not be scared of trying new foods (he is such a fussy bugger and would only live off carrots and broccoli given half the chance) last night, he ate a meatball! YAY!  If you don’t have kids, you can also do this for the loved ones in your life, for some reason, I got one from Santa and have been put on the naughty list as my husband says I am late for everything…pfft!

Next night, I had a night out with the girls, and Husband worried I would either fall into the tree with Clyde or do something ridiculous…so I can home very very drunk, but exceptionally happy, and was astounded to see Clyde on a 4×4 experience!

Sunday night, Clyde made sure the kids would remember to brush their teeth.

Then last night, he was as fatigued as I was and decided it was time to chill out!

Tonight, we will wait and see if Clyde can be bothered getting out of his bed!

Clyde a bit homesick?

Pink child has a ritual every night since our ‘Elf on the Shelf’ came to stay, each night she tells him she loves him very much, but don’t dare go to her bedroom!

One thing I like about the kids looking for the elf, is each morning they are up like bullets, which means no constant yelling to get up for school! This morning, pink child was starting to worry that her little friend had enough, got a bit homesick and decided not to come back to us.  She couldn’t find him anywhere

That was until I started to make the breakfast and went into the fridge to get the milk…

He was obviously missing the chill of the North Pole, and decided to settle down in the fridge with some snacks.

Snowball fight

Last night nearly ended up in disaster with Clyde.

Looks like a bit of harmless fun, our elf, Clyde having a fun snowball fight in my lounge with Buzz Lightyear.  Prior to this, poor Clyde nearly ended up in Accident and Emergency.  First of, our Puppy, Mac, who is a 5 month old cocker spaniel, would run off with all the cotton balls…then, he ran off with Clyde in his mouth, I literally started screaming at Husbando to get Clyde or he is going to get hurt!!!!

One needs to get a reality check!