Christmas in Radcliffe, back to work then New Year at home

As you can imagine, things have been rather hectic these past few weeks.

We drove up to Radcliffe on Christmas morning (2 hours 40 mins - this will be relevent later), and had a lovely, traditional Christmas Day - a great turkey dinner, time to open presents before watching the Queen, then entertaining Lara. I even managed to get through the day without a nap, not bad since we'd got up at 6.30. We had to wake Lara up, and when we asked her if we should go and see if Santa had been, the reply was something like "Not yet, I want to stay in bed"!!

Lara took to her roller skates with great aplomb, only falling over a couple of times, and even then she managed to fall gracefully. Her balance is good, and when we took her out with the boys for a walk, she was much better at staying on the sledge whilst Mishka pulled her along at a sprint, managing a personal best of about 80 metres in one ride.

On Boxing Day we took Lara to the East Lancashire Railway for a trip on a steam train. Depending on which side of the train you are sitting, the scenery was either dramatic snow-covered countryside or industrial sprawl, but Lara loved the steam engine, and the driver gave an extra long toot on the horn whilst we watched it pulling away after we got off, which delighted Lara.

The journey home on the Monday took rather longer, more like 5 hours, which scuppered our ideas of starting the job of turning our bedroom into our new home office. On the Tuesday we drove into the Cotswolds to meet up with Catherine, Nick, Elizabeth and William for a lovely pub lunch and to swap some more presents.
Olga and I were back at work from the Wednesday to Friday, and Lara came with us. It would have been nice to have had a quiet couple of days there, but we were both pretty busy with trying to clear our "to do" lists before we leave.

On New Years Eve we did our usual thing, we got a load of food and drink in and had a little house party, just the five of us. Lara went to bed just before 10pm, but Olga and I saw it through until nearly 4am. It was Olga's turn to get up with Lara, and whilst she's a very good sleeper, Olga was expecting to be getting up around 7.30. It was a lovely surprise that the monitor stayed quiet until 10.15am! Lara really is a teenager trapped in a 3 year old's body when it comes to sleeping. Either that or Mothercare don't get enough praise for their cotbed and mattress, it must be very comfy.  We only recently took the sides off her cot, just after we got home from the Lake District, and we were worried about her sleeping less, and wanting to get up and wander about, but if anything she is actually sleeping more since she had a "proper" bed. She hasn't once got up and left her room, which is good. She does wake up and help herself to a drink of water from her bedside table, which cuts down on the visits Olga and I had to make to see her in the evenings.
The next night was even better - we put her to bed early by her standards, around 6.30, and I was expecting to be up at 7.30 as usual, but as it was I had to go in and wake her up at 10.20! That's just crazy. But we're not complaining!