James Brown R.I.P

I'm glad that you both enjoyed Church pal. When do you go on your brief vacation?

Being her mother's "weekend" Katherine stayed at her mothers house on Christmas eve, I saw her for most of the morning for the ritual present opening session then off she went to her mothers sisters house, with mother, mothers boyfriend and sister in tow for lunch. I'll see her again tomorrow and then all the way through - hopefully she'll be with me for New Years eve, but that's up to her ! She didn't actually go to her mother's house until late Sunday, so I had her from Friday til Sunday evening, she refuses to accept that parents have "weekend" turns.

She now has a mobile (cell) phone, I have had 22 SMS text messages from her since 1pm, 4 of them picture messages (go to a URL) and one of them a video clip she recorded of herself. I have no idea how to do all this techy stuff, but clearly phones are intuitive to nine year olds. Perhaps browser-based does mean intuitive :)

Milestone: I missed my first customer phone meeting in 20 years, and a regular weekly meeting that I arranged! So my customers dialled in, hung around and then dialled out. I thought that the call was 30 minutes later than it was. Boy did I apologize. I am officially "losing it" now, too much going on.

My daughter very much likes blogging with us, but I guess this will last for about two weeks knowing her attention span! (No offence my darling daughter :) I added her as an author, she carries this piece of blanket around in the evenings, called "The Blanky", thus her handle, she is very fond of it, having had it since birth, although it's not much bigger than a postage stamp now.

I know what you mean about Christmas, it's all so jaded and capitalist. People say that they don't have the time to get the presents they wished they could - thus the onset of the gift voucher culture. We all have far too much when there is so much poverty and starvation in the world, yet still I see folks complaining because they got "the wrong" mp3 player. We get very jaded. It is encouraging to watch the excitement of a nine year old asking "what activity can I do to make tomorrow come quicker?" .. it's the big occasion they love, not just the presents. And there once were we.