This morning I woke up to these three things:

1) The soft crackling of rain as it fell on the grass outside my window.
2) The woop-woop call of the local swamp pheasant from down the road.
3) The unavoidable truth that at some point during the night Santa crawled down my throat to lay mines timed to explode as soon as I opened my eyes.

I’ve been feeling unwell for a few days now and I’ve had to cancel a few things I’d planned to do around here – like post up my Christmas Card Challenge family portrait (like I did for 2009). The significant reason for this is, well, I haven’t taken it yet.

However with the help of a plugin I shall hereafter kneel down and kiss the feet of, I did manage to send out my ‘Thank You’ email/ecard yesterday to all the commenters for this year here on Miscellaneous Mum. With your help $121 is going to go to my Profits Pledge, the Australian Red Cross. My thanks again to you all – and if you’re a lurker, please do come out of hiding. It all helps. Not to put pressure on you or anything!

Finally, so I feel like I’ve left you all with some Christmas spirit, here’s our traditional gingerbread house my mother baked and assembled and the kids decorated. Pretty superb, eh?

We head back to Melbourne in a few days (flying with sinus issues? Oh, that’s going to be FUN) and I can’t quite believe this month is almost over. Which means this year is almost over.

And you know what that means – this is the 2010 BEST OF / YEAR OF / YEAR THAT WAS / POSTS OF DEEP REFLECTION AND UTTER BEAUTY time of year. As you can tell, from my blatant capitalisation’s and tongue-in-cheekness, I’m not quite in the mental state to do that (even leaving my sickness aside!) Not yet, at least. Soon!

I hope you all have had a lovely festive season surrounded by those you love and who love you. I have been.

karen andrews

Karen Andrews is the creator of this website, one of the most established and well-respected parenting blogs in the country. She is also an author, award-winning writer, poet, editor and publisher at Miscellaneous Press. Her latest book is Trust the Process: 101 Tips on Writing and Creativity