Aaaah the holidays...what joy, what bliss!

Aaaaah the holidays, how I love the holidays, time to stop and just be, time to bake, scrapbook, clean, watch tv, weed, garden, (if you call it gardening it feels much better than weeding! LOL) and read.
The kids celebrate the first night of the holidays with a couch sleep over, (they get to sleep on the couch instead of their beds). Ethan didn't last long before creeping into my bed but Western was still snoring when we got up in the morning. Theres nothing like the wet nose of a Molly to wake you up or a 4 year old little brother jumping on you.

Neil went back to work today, (children inside on rainy days and Dads do not mix well in our house!) but not after managing to finally be nagged into fixing my old scotch dresser so Ethan could have a decent set of drawers. I made good use of the opportunity to sort out both Ethan and Western's clothes and have 5 bags to take to the local op shop. I've also managed to sort through all our books and have 5 cartons to donate to the Heart Foundation for their annual book sale. I've finally realised you don't need to own every book you have read, thats what libraries are for! I only buy kids books (can never have too many of those!) and my very favourite authors, Stephanie Meyer, Diana Galbadon and Sara Donati.I'm going to get all the Charlaine Harris and Laurell K Hamilton books too. I've just started reading Laurell K Hamilton from the beginning again.  I've even packed up all my Stephen Kings. I've found his last couple  of books hard going and if I want to revisit his writing I can visit the library.
I've managed to empty 2 book cases which I'm taking up to my sister Gail on Friday so her 400 plus books can have a home.

Hands up if you know what one of these is? Anybody over 40 out there LOL. I heard some music coming from the manland shed yesterday that brought back some memories of my teenage years and went to investigate. Neil had dusted off a box of records we had inherited from his sister Sheryl and was working his way through them. They reckon vinyl is making a comeback (vinyl being the new trendy word for LPs or records) but even the die hards probably don't want these albums...

These were in amongst Whitney, Barbra Steisand, Rick Astley, Bruce Springsteen, Laura Brannigan and Duran Duran. What an eclectic collection. The album covers are great, some of them real works of art and they all seemed to have inserts too.

Currently playing John Cougar Mellancamp and an album I used to own too.

I took Ethan out to see the turntable in action, he has seen one before, we use one for painting at Playcentre. I thought he should see an inportant part of his parents history in action. LOL. When Western first saw it he called the records big black cds.
Lets hope we get some sunny days these holidays there are only so many things you can do inside with bored kids....