You might have noticed I haven’t posted my usual Living Arrows posts for a few weeks now. After I last posted near the start of December my dad became suddenly and unexpectedly ill with acute pancreatitis. Unfortunately it’s a condition that there isn’t really any treatment for, and although the doctors did everything they could, he died peacefully in hospital two weeks later. I didn’t post anything because I didn’t really know what to say…

I can’t believe there are only two weeks of school left before we break up for the Christmas holidays! We do finish very early this year, with a full week at home before Christmas Day but this half term still just feels like it has absolutely flown by!

One day I’ll actually catch up with these Living Arrows posts…but today is not that day! The boys are getting more excited about Christmas by the day, especially now we’ve started on the advent calendar. We’ve not put the Christmas tree up yet though – that’s a job for this weekend.

Does anyone else’s head feel like it’s about to explode with all the things you’ve got to remember at the moment? There are dates for non-uniform days, Christmas lunches, nativities and carol concerts, and then I’m trying to keep track of Christmas shopping, and thinking of presents for the boys for all the rest of the family to buy as well! I feel really disorganised somehow and it’s only 3 weeks until we break up for the holidays!

OK, so let’s just ignore the fact this post is almost an entire week late and crack on shall we? Time is just flying at the moment, between school and the boys’ Cubs, Beavers, swimming lessons and Street Monkeys we really don’t seem to have time for anything else!

Another week of school done and we only have 28 more school days to go before the Christmas holidays! We started rehearsing the nativity today (although we still aren’t sure if the children are actually going to be able to perform in front a live audience) and now bonfire night is over it really does feel like we’re on the countdown to Christmas all of a sudden. I even started my Christmas shopping the other day!

And just like that half term is over and we’ve been back at school for three days already! We did spend a great (if very wet) four days in Edinburgh last week, although it already feels like it was ages ago! Unfortunately spending most of last week away didn’t do anything to help anyone’s tiredness levels… I think it’s going to be quite a long slog until Christmas now!

We made it! We have survived the first half term of school without any of us catching Covid! I’m probably just tempting fate now and we’ll come down with it next week but I’m just glad we’ve made it this far. The last week of term was fairly uneventful – but it did end with very a positive parents’ evening for both boys, and them both getting certificates. Gabe got Star of the Week and Toby’s was for representing the school in an ‘Invasion Games’ competition held at the local high school.

So at the end of last week both Toby and Gabe started coughing, and Gabe had a temperature too. I had had an awful cold all week (and several negative Covid tests) so I was hoping they just had my cold. I took them for PCR tests on Thursday morning and they had the day off school while we waited for the results.

I started writing these Living Arrows posts in 2014 and in seven and a half years I have only missed two weeks, and that was back in 2015… until last week! I always used to write the post on a Sunday night, ready to publish on a Monday morning, but for the last month or so they have been getting later and later in the week.