Cancelled trains, champion icicles & Christmas decorations

Well, firstly, the cancelled trains. 

There have been no trains running on our local train line for over a week now as a result of the weather. I take the boys in to school on the train but since school was off anyway this was no big deal. However, on Friday morning we heard that ALL trains from the central belt of Scotland and northwards were cancelled. This included my beloved's train home! He investigated a couple of other options but nothing was available and so we spent the weekend without daddy and he spent it in a lonely flat.

I had been leaving the digging the car out of the snow for him to do when he came back, so instead I did it myself on Saturday morning so that we could get some food (my brother's wife had managed to get their car out before then and had called round with some welcome supplies for us on Friday). 

When we were home from the supermarket my brother came round and helped me clear a bit more of the snow because I had only done the bear minimum - phew, it was hard work! Tea was joking in the comments below that we must have 8 feet of snow and it certainly felt like that when I was shovelling it! 

While my brother was here the boys and their cousins were throwing snowballs at the icicles on the house to try and knock them down. They didn't want to knock this one down though because it's our champion one.

Some people in our street put up those Christmas lights outside their house that look like icicles. I don't think they need to bother this year - this is the view from Calum & David's bedroom.

After all that hard work shovelling snow on Saturday, there had been no snow for about 48 hours, until this morning, when it began falling again and another 8 inches or so fell. 

I was trying to summon up the energy to go out again and shovel while it was still soft when I saw one of my nice neighbours doing it for me!

Since the boys were a bit disappointed at not seeing daddy this weekend, I decided we would put our Christmas tree up, slightly earlier than we normally do.

These are a few of my favourite decorations.

The boys made these Bible verse scrolls last Christmas. Just to the right of it you can see a little Thomas the Tank Engine peeking out. I bought a set of them back when I only had two boys (a toddler & a baby) and they have been popular every year since!

David made this big star last year at Sunday School.

And of course no self respecting tree in this house would be complete without a LEGO decoration! There are three of these snowmen dotted around the tree.

Under the tree are these little cuties.

We also have quite a few advent calendars too!

Firstly is the Playmobil one (which we also bought way back when there were only two boys).

Each day they get a different piece of Playmobil.....

..........and add it to the festive scene.

This one is Calum and Alasdair's, because they can't eat chocolate we put a little treat that they can have in each pouch for them.

David and James have the standard chocolate ones.

And our final one, but the most important, is our Jesse Tree Calendar.

Each window has a Bible verse behind it and a short devotion in the book connected to the verse.

You tear the window off the calendar as it has a picture on it relating to the Scripture and hang it on your Jesse tree. The devotions point from the Old Testament through to the birth of Jesus, pointing out all the prophesies and promises throughout.

Gaelic word of the day:

craobh nollaig (criv nollag) - Christmas tree

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