A Letter To Myself

This time last year I wrote a not very happy blog. It was about how my parents were struggling to write their annual christmas boasting letter, a lot of things were up in the air for them, and I had had a difficult year too, being pregnant and homeless (not really homeless on the street...read more here if you're wondering.)

Well 2017 has been good to us, and things are no longer "up in the air" for me and my parents things are solidly down on the ground as we have both bought new houses this year. we moved into our house in February and then in May I gave birth to baby Eric.

2016 = Pregnant and homeless

2017 = New house New baby.

In fact it was Jo who didn't get a mention on the christmas letter this year... she just been working hard as a doctor this year with no major life changes. - You'll have to do better than that if you want a mention in the christmas letter Jo.

A previous conversation between my parents:
Dad- do you think Jo will mind that she didn't really get a mention?

Mum- No! they don't compare themselves like that

Dad- Hannah will.

So anyway this was meant to be a blog about how thankful I am to be where I am now in life compared to how 2016 ended.

When we were packing down the christmas decorations that we'd put up in our room last year I wrote a little note to myself and put in one of the tiny drawers of our wooden advent calendar, and forgot about it. At the end of November we had just bought a christmas tree and got the christmas box down from the loft when I came across the note I had written.

I cried a genuine tear.

I should point out that 2016 wasn't all bad, living with the Langston family had many advantages and we really enjoyed the summer there with their massive garden. But the uncertainty of not knowing how long we would be there, and getting caught up in what turned out to be a complicated house sale while also experiencing morning sickness was a bit too much at times. We sort of joked that we were were homeless, but obviously we weren't... we were just experiencing "housing based uncertainty" which is like 1% of the problems a real homeless person faces. So it got me thinking about real homelessness.

So far in life I've not had much luck helping the homeless, me and Dan once baked some cakes to give out to homeless people, and then one time me and my friend Helen befriended a Romanian homeless woman, we chatted to her whenever we saw her and sometimes gave her things. Once she told us she needed new shoes. So Helen said "lets go shopping" we wondered around St. Johns shopping centre pointing out cheap but practical trainers but she chose a pair of sparkly strappy sandals, which we awkwardly bought. That was a weird day.

So in November we had a Thankfulness Brunch. I provided a load of food and then people generously donated money to the Whitechapel centre, a Liverpool homeless charity. We made a thankfulness tree where we wrote things we were thankful for.

...and we made a den for the kids. Thanks to everyone who came. x

I loved getting excited about christmas this year, Percy is particularly interested in snow. Despite having never seen it, he likes to pretend that he is sledging, and he loves talking about snowmen. He's decided that he wants to live in Antartica when he's a grown up and has plans to take all of us and transport our house to Antartica. While in Antatrica he want to get a job as someone who fixes screwdrivers. He's a strange child.

So we were really excited when it when we heard it was going to snow here, I went out and bought a sledge in anticipation. Unfortunatly only a tiny bit of snow reached us. 

Trying to make the most of Liverpool's disappointing snow.

But I was determined to show him some snow. We got on twitter and searched the trending hashtag #uksnow to try and find the nearest place with deep snow and a hill. We ended up going just south of Delamere. 

I'm so glad we did it, it was magical...but if you're looking at this thinking "oh I would love to have children and do these wonderful things", you should also know it involved an hour of packing a spare outfit and snacks for everyone. And a good 5 or 10 minutes of crying at the end when we were trying to get into the car and get warm. Plus it had to be arranged around nap times and feeding times. All this for half an hour of fun before the boys got too cold. It was worth it though.

Merry Christmas from the Joneses.