I know it’s technically 2019 now but I’m sure you can forgive me being a few days late with my last Me & Mine post of 2018. Although December seemed to fly past up until Christmas the last week and a bit feels like it has lasted a month on its own!

As I mentioned in my Me & Mine post last month, we started December with a weekend in London for Barry and I. We ended up leaving both Gabe and Toby suffering from a sick bug while my parents looked after them, and then we both succumbed whilst we were away too!

Once we were back though the Christmas preparations began in earnest. Toby and Gabe both had nativities so there was a lot of singing practice going on in our house. There was a Christmas Fair at Toby’s school too, along with Christmas parties… safe to say we had two very excited boys for most of the month!

The second weekend of December I spent a lovely weekend in Yorkshire with some blogging friends (which I will get round to writing about very soon), and the weekend after Barry was in Manchester for his work Christmas night out, and then a night out with his school friends.

All that meant we didn’t have a lot of time together as a family in December. We did go on a Santa train the weekend before Christmas though and managed to get this snap of us all together.

The boys loved the train and it was a really good Father Christmas (with a real beard!) so I’m sure it’s something we’ll do again in years to come.

My second picture this month is actually a bit of a cheat because it was taken on New Year’s Day. We went to stay with my brother and sister-in-law for New Year’s Eve, and then yesterday my Mum and Dad came over. We went for a walk and lunch at Hardcastle Crags (the second time using our National Trust membership). It was good to get out in the fresh air but Toby’s fear of dogs was out in full force, and that rubs off on Gabe too, so I spent quite a lot of the time giving them piggy backs to keep them ‘safe’. If anyone has any top tips for dealing with a fear of dogs by the way then I would love some ideas because it really affects what would otherwise be lovely family days out.

Anyway, we did manage to get this picture, even if Toby has got a toy tortoise on his head!

And lastly, it wouldn’t be the final Me & Mine post of the year without my collage of all the pictures from 2018. This is the fifth year I have published a family picture of us every month, and I love that this project makes me take them – I’m sure I wouldn’t have nearly so many photos of us all together without it.