Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope you all had a great break like we did and feel refreshed and ready to begin taking on the new year.

Our Christmas break started with Mister Pick and I having a few days to ourselves, which is something we always look forward to (a lot). We went into Newcastle to shop, visit the Christmas market, have a fantastic lunch at The Botanist, and just had time to relax for a change. The following day was our mall day for shopping which completely exhausted us. We had dinner at Thaikun as it’s one of our favorites and we knew it would be a while before we could have a nice meal together on our own. We spent the next day at home watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny which really was pretty good, so I don’t know what the exact complaints were about it. That was us done for our proper break. Jack had to go back to the nursery for a bit on Friday, much to his disappointment, to do his first nativity play where he was the innkeeper.

My heart was completely full.

Saturday we went to the Elf Enchanted Journey at Whitehouse Farm for the first time and that was fantastic. We will definitely be doing that again and I really liked that we waited when we were all on break to have fun and get in the festive spirit. The next day, on Christmas Eve, we went to the Santa Breakfast at our local Tobey Carvery. It’s always a bit of a tough one when Jack is excited and we’re trying to keep him entertained while we eat, but it was a nice experience to say the least. I found it interesting that Jack usually won’t speak to Santa but at breakfast, he told him he wanted his Robot Doggy which he did receive on Christmas morning. (Santa said he’d seen the elves working on them too!)

Then the rest of the break was us hanging out. Jack told us over and over again how he liked being home with us, playing with his toys, so we didn’t exhaust ourselves with more goings out. As part of Jack’s 4th birthday, we went to Locomotion to see the trains. The Flying Scotsman was there and I underestimated how busy the place would be because of that, but we eventually got through the parking lot traffic and in for a nice visit.

I, of course, had two colds while we were on break and did have to work on the Saturday before New Year’s, but I survived. I was shattered from coughing so much one night and waking up around 3:30 in the morning (then going to work — always fun) but the two rest days after that helped a lot.

And now I’ve been to work and taken the day off again to get all the tasks done that I wanted to get done. I’ve taken the Paw Patrol cake topper to the baker to get Jack’s party cake done this weekend. As part of my New Year’s resolutions, I’ve rejoined Slimming World and spent some time on the treadmill at my new gym. (Not to mention watching TV and sitting around with the dog which is not part of my resolutions but it’s worth it anyway.)

I wish everyone a fantastic new year and a great start to 2024.