A Matter of Choice

Another one of my 'Talking on Eggshells' posts, which if you missed it was the 'other' blog I briefly started and then decided to ditch.  So as not to lose the few posts I'd published I decided to move them over to here - hence the 'New Years' post in February.     I've always loved New Year, the very start of them at least. Many a New Years Day has been hungover to varying degrees, but once we recover from that I love the new beginning.  I love a new calendar,  writing in the birthdays and any plans that have been made for the year.      As much as I love Christmas I like to get the decorations away, have a good clean and feel like we are back to 'normal'.  I'm not one for making a long list of resolutions, but I do tend to have some in mind at least each year.  I never plan to start them immediately though,  I think that's a recipe for complete failure, for me at least.  It doesn't seem to be mentioned much these da...

Here we are in the second month of 2021. I hope you all made it through January relatively unscathed? What a strange time it is,  and what a strange mood I find myself in now it's February.    I'm happy to say I'm ok, which is pretty good I think considering.  I'm neither sad or bouncing off the walls happy, we are plodding along in our own little world and getting through it ok.  Home school isn't the best thing of course but the last 2 weeks have been a thousand times better than the previous lockdown so I'm feeling very grateful for that.  We have fallen into a routine of sorts with Leo getting on with his online lessons,  he's not really enjoying them but does it all without fuss and I'm proud of how he's handling it all.    Louka generally has worksheets to complete, and I usually have to sit with him to give him encouragement the whole time but if I give him 100% then we are muddling though them together with a bit of  Google trans...

A couple of years ago I saw a friend on facebook had started following a yoga program on YouTube by Yoga With Adriene . Back in 2008 I used to go to Pilates classes weekly which I enjoyed and continued going to until I was about 7 months pregnant, I'd never managed to find any Pilates videos I liked online and as  I surmised that Yoga would be pretty similar so thought I'd give it a go too. I like a program to follow, exact instructions if you like, I think it's why I've got on so well with Slimming World over the years so I was full of optimism as I started 30 Days of Yoga. I can't remember how many days I did,  maybe 3? I wanted to get fit and I had probably at least a couple of stone I wanted to lose and when I sat on the mat closing my eyes and holding my hands together over my heart I couldn't help but think 'I haven't got time for this s**t)   Meditation has never held any interest for me, my mind would wander too much and I'd be impatie...

Happy new year dear blog readers! On New Years Eve I'd taken the boys to Paralimni town centre just as it got dark to see the Christmas lights as we'd not got round to going there yet and I felt like we hadn't left the house in days.  We came home to a warm house,  music on, bubbly chilling and so our traditional NYE evening was about to get underway! Mum and Dad arrived and we celebrated with lots of food, drinks and music. Mostly sat ( and at various points dancing) and singing along to youtube,  all the old songs that it wouldn't be NYE without! Even Leo was singing along to Chas and Dave! Just before midnight I played our usual countdown which ends with the 'bongs' of Big Ben and a rousing rendition of Auld Langs Syne - although we don't get the chimes live at midnight, it's just not New Year until I hear them!     We all stood outside on the balcony (luckily it was not raining yet)  and I opened the front door as is the tra...