Happy Birthday

I didn't get around to posting yesterday but happy birthday to my dad anyway.

We have been busy doing not much at all - just the odd walk in the woods, eating drinking and trying to decide where and when to go on holiday in 2010.

J had been promised "the biggest chocolate cake in the world" if he managed not to wee in his pants in December which he (more or less) managed so he got this.

We polished off the turkey in a rather fine pie that I made from scratch.

This morning the car is being serviced before MK and I go to Copenhagen for lunch and a quiet, child free stroll around the city.

Happy Christmas

We have had a very nice relaxed Christmas so far and are looking forard to a few more days off. T&B fed us very well on the 24th, I cooked on the 25th and today we have rested.

Thanks to everyone for your generous gifts and we look forward to catching up with all our friends and family in 2010.

Happy Christymas

I can't believe how busy I am this week and I suspect I'll have to do some exta stuff before going back officially no 4th January but at least I got the biggest stuff out of the way.

We're getting set to eat ourselves into oblivion for the next few days so it's time to wish you all a happy Christmas and get busy in the kitchen. I just made some leek and potato soup for tea this evening in an effort to avoid rich food for a couple of hours before the sh#t hits the fan tomorrow afternoon...

Have a good one and I hope Santa brings what you want.

Winter continues outside

Thankfully I don't need to drive very far for the rest of the week, but it does look like there won't be much riding outside on my days off either.

These guys were getting cabin fever earlier so MK has taken them out in the snow to burn off some energy.

Busy in Norway

I've had a busy day in the sout of Norway and I am currently sitting
waiting for a flight back to CPH.
Hopefully some sort of normal blogging will resume tomorrow with
something to read, but you never know. I can see I am going to busy
right up to Christmas.

Mad snow

THere was about 15cm of snow here last night and the country is doing an impression of the UK with 1.5cm of snow meaning that lots of things have ground to a halt.

I got to work ok, now I have to get home...

Edit: Which I managed without serious incident

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

No time for Christmas at the moment

Yesterday was a very busy day for me in Copenhagen. I took the train to avoid all of the climate summit congestion but as a result spent a reasonable amount of time walking around in the falling snow. The evening was another hurried afair with work calls coming in throughout, DK breaking a glass snow ball thingy and everything happening rather later than planned.

The result was that the kids were not in bed until 8 and I was not feeling up to training as a result of my cold/flu thing and general tiredness. Instead I decided to watch "Don't mess with the Zohan" that was lying around from the DVD club. It was crap. There is very little else to say other than don't waste your time with it, you'd be better off asleep.

Today the busyness business continues so I doubt that I will make it to the Nursey Christmas bazar to buy back the picture frames that we gave them a few weeks ago. I am sure MK will come home laden with works of art though :-)

Slush Cup #3

Yesterday was the first really cold day of the winter and it also happened to be the day of the 3rd round of the slush cup mountain bike race series. It was a really nice sunny morning, there was hardly any mud to contend with and the race was a lot of fun.

I was 119th out of 216 so firmly in the middle as ever. The problem is that you are allocated a start spot and by the time the crowds have thinned out, the guys in front are so far in front that you have no chance of catching them. I have to be honest though, I belong in the middle and I am happy to stay there.

In the afternoon, we all went to a local farm with T&B to find a Christmas tree and to see the Christmas market. We succeed in finding a tree and J now has a father Christmas hat with flashing lights around it - very tasteful!

Finally, when we sat down on the sofa last night to relax I felt very cold and tired, this got worse and worse until I went to be realising that I was getting sick. I think spent about 4 hours tossing and turning, sweating and not settling as I tried to go to sleep. As a result I am home today feeling rather crappy and hoping that I don't have swine flu !

So little to say

It's turning into another week of work, childcare, a bit of bike riding, eating and some sleep. In other words, not much is happening worthy of note here.

Last night we watched the latest Harry Potter film which was actually pretty good but it did mean that we got to bed late yet again although it was better than the previous nights when I have not managed to get myself under the duvet until after midnight. I really am hopeless at making myself turn off the TV or computer and go to bed unless there is someone to tell me to.

Later today I am getting my hair cut and that will almost certainly be the highlight of the day.

Aborted Haircut

MK just came home from the hair dressers with the boys. J was as well behaved as usual (in this case that does actually mean well behaved because he gets lollipops for sitting still) but DK was difficult.

Apparently he was so difficult that they abandoned the whole operation and we have to take him back on Saturday morning to finish the job off!

Hard at it

I am really busy at work at the moment, hence the lack of a blog on Tuesday. However, despite work and kids, I have managed to do my training tonight so I am feeling quite pleased with myself.

3 x 12 minutes Steady State (approx 152 BPM) with 6 minutes between intervals.

That was harder than I thought it would be although I suppose that in some way I've been on a tread-mill all day.

Non stop action

There is a lot going on over here at the moment. My journey to work this morning took me 1½ hours because if the climate conference and we have been advised to avoid Copenhagen completely on some days next week. I can see it will be a pain in the neck just getting around.

J and I spent Friday doing a bit of Christmas shopping and managed to find everything that we needed although he was somewhat disappointed by the time that he spent at work with me before we hit the shops. Oddly enough he found it boring despite being force fed sweets by my colleagues for most of the time he was there.

On Saturday I managed a decent bike ride whilst cooking a load of stuff for dinner in the evening when some some friends came to eat with us. It was nice to see them and they have since called to instruct MK that we should leave DK & J with them one evening and go out to eat because she looks like she needs feeding up a bit.

Sunday was my company's family Christmas party. We had a great time, there was a magician, far too much to eat and of course the kids got presents. Now I have to get on with some work and figure out how to do all the other stuff that has to be finalised before Christmas.

Time Crunched Training update

I started the new training plan on Monday and so far it has been fine. In had to do a test at the weekend to determine my maximum average heart rate that I could sustain for 8 minutes (I had to do that twice and it was not much fun) to determine my training zones.

Then on Monday it was a fairly easy 45-60 minutes riding before the real sessions started on Tuesday with 3 x 10 minutes Steady State, which for me meant with a heart rate between 148 and 151. That was harder work and I have to do it again today although yesterday was a rest day. Somehow I seem to have synchronised this poorly with real life because tonight I will be late home from work, we need to flush DK's bowels and the boys both need a bath so I suspect it will be another late night.

Tomorrow, however, will be something of a challenge for a totally different reason. J is coming to work with me in the morning and then we are going into CPH for some Christmas shopping in the afternoon. He is normally very well behaved when it is just the 2 of us but I know he will got bored in the office so I plan to do a bit of work at home before we go to make sure that there are no emergencies that need to be dealt with and then keep the desk time to a minimum. We also have a Nintendo Wii in the office that I should be able to get working for J if someone helps me. Thankfully it is another rest day from training though.

Less wee, fewer nappies and more plastic toys

J has been pretty good at not weeing in his pants since his 4th birthday. We don't quite know why, but he happily went through 2,3 or 4 pairs of trousers a day until his birthday and from then on it has only happened once or twice because 4 year olds don't wee in their trousers. We don't know why, but we are happy about it.

However, he doesn't seemed to have figured out how to not wee in his bed so he still sleeps in a nappy. The problem was that between putting the nappy on and getting into be he would inevitably use it meaning that it needed changing before bed and that habit was getting rather annoying and expensive as well so we made a deal that if he could manage a week without weeing in his nappy before bed he could have something that he really wants:

Isn't that ugly?

Winter

This morning was exciting for the kids because they got to open the first doors on their advent calendars. Both DK and J have a chocolate one that Mum brought over from England and J also has a Lego one with lots of little lego men and things in it.

The weather has taken a noticeably wintry turn today, it is only 3C outside at the moment and it feels rally cold. It's about time that the autumn petered out and we got some proper winter, it has to happen sooner or later so let's just get on with it.

The other exciting event of the day was the drain cleaning man coming in his big truck. DK struggled to contain his excitement at the sight of the big orange truck and MK commented that we were all unusually excited at the prospect of a man in hi-vis overalls cleaning out the drains. Hopefully we won't have any more flooding problems when the next bought of very heavy rain hits and our basement will be dry from now on.