Snow time

It was snowing this morning from before I got up at 7.30 till 9.45. The flakes varied between small and dusty and big and heavy. The temperature on the balcony was 3C, so it didn't really settle on the ground, but the cars are all white. We were planning to go to Santander today to get some shopping, but as it is not essential we'll leave it for when the roads are a bit safer. The kids had a great time trying to catch snowflakes on their way to school.

During the weekend, it was just very cold and grotty -- rain and icy wind. We wrapped the kids up well and took them out for a bike ride in the park on Saturday, but with the wind Jamie could barely get started, and we ended up scuttling back home fairly quickly. It was more a case of getting them out of the house briefly, to stop them getting too stir crazy.

We rented Collateral on Saturday. Excellent thriller with great direction and script, a good performance by Tom Cruise, but can anybody tell me what the big deal is with 'Academy award winner' Jamie Foxx? To me he just seemed like he was practicing his best frown all the time.

Last week we put up adverts in supermarkets for the baby furniture -- the cot, wardrobe and chest of drawers/changing unit. As I only have a black-and-white printer, I asked a friend to print some colour copies for us. She showed them to a friend of hers who is pregnant, who phoned us and came round to see them on Saturday. She walked in, glanced at the furniture and said "when shall we arrange to pick them up?". Uh ok then. She didn't even open a cupboard or drawer. So that was easy - in fact you then start wondering if you shouldn't have asked for more money… However, it is very handy to have it sold so quickly, and as the price was half what we paid for it in Holland 6½ years ago, I don't think we've done badly. Danny is going through a phase of trying to get attention whenever we talking to other people, so he was doing a very loud estate agent impression at our feet, showing off his toy chest and crates, and beautiful play mat. Where's Supernanny when you need her?

While it's nice to have got that sorted out, we both spent a few wistful minutes looking at the furniture after the people had gone. Another milestone, sigh.

Speaking of ads, we got another booking at the weekend. July is now fully booked, in fact we've had to turn several people down. This was a French family, who phoned us, so I had to use my rusty French which was interesting. What with all the Spanish and Dutch words I kept sprinkling into the conversation by accident, I was getting a headache by the end of it. Meanwhile, August is still completely available, although we do have a provisional reservation from an English family for the last two weeks.