And so to the penultimate week of the year. It’s been a funny week, there were so many Christmas events last week but far fewer this week and it was a strange mix of Christmas and everyday life.

It is always a week to carefully balance life in a school. Christmas isn’t the same for all children and it’s trying to offer a little festive magic but not hyping it up too much. We did simple Christmas activities, sensory stories, Christmas songs, crafts, jigsaws and on the wet play day showed a Christmas film. As staff we did our Secret Santas after school and they were all top gifts. I got a tote bag saying obsessed with Vinted, my team know me well. The image of me above was part of our team’s Christmas card, AI was very kind and definitely glammed us all up!

At home, I had all of Christmas pretty much wrapped up last week so I spent some time just adding the nice little touches, for example creating our hot chocolate station to the more mundane of replacing batteries in some of my lights and retiming the timers. I may be a bit of a perfectionist in my Christmas decorations. I was delighted to finally find a lovely wreath for my gate. I’ve been looking at my usual favourite shops but none had anything, real, stylish and natural. By total chance, I visited a parkrun this weekend and the allocated parking was a B&M car park. As I had a little time I popped into the shop and got some amazing buys, more extras for the hot chocolate station and a wreath I loved and fitting all my criteria reduced down to £5, I was very happy.

I was at a new parkrun on Saturday morning as on Friday evening I travelled to see my parents in the West Country straight from work. My daughter and I enjoyed a Christmas dinner with them and lots of Christmas treats before they jetted off in the morning for a hot and sunny Christmas holiday. It was a quick visit but my only chance to spend time with them this festive season. As luck would have it, a new parkrun has recently started near them in Bridgwater so I popped there on Saturday to finally achieve my Gold Obsessive badge, my 50th parkrun of the year. I was so close last year with 48 runs and thanks to careful holiday timings and no injuries I did it this year. I feel that’s taken the pressure off and I know it won’t be repeated next year as I already have 4 weekends away booked with no parkruns available.

Another achievement this week was 1000 Wordle games recorded. I have played many more games but it took me a while to register, however I am very pleased to have hit the milestone.

The final picture is a hand drawn picture of our neighbour’s dog by my daughter. It has been framed now and is a work from the heart for his Christmas present. We all miss his wife so much and her dog was everything to her so we hope and know that this personal present will be very welcomed.

I have had the most lovely, lazy day today. The first day in months when I’ve been able to simply rest and potter at home, no driving! I did go for a long run this morning before the heavy rain started. It’s definitely been a day to hunker down and we’ve opened the Christmas chocolates and had a fancy mince pie. Christmas is here.