It's also hard to type with your fingers crossed

Well, the parental units left for the airport yesterday at about 3pm. (We used a sledge to take their luggage round to the main road to meet the taxi!). Their flight was cancelled shortly after they arrived and they spent a couple of hours arguing about who was supposed to sort out a rebooking and whether they would have to pay for new flights to Sydney. Then they joined the monumental queue for a taxi. In a blizzard.

We couldn't sit in the house knowing they were standing there so we rounded up some neighbours and with spades and judicious use of elbow grease and cardboard sheets, managed to dig our car out and physically push it the 30 yards or so to the main road. Once there we managed to get to the airport to collect them and bring them home.

They are re-booked to fly out tomorrow (Wednesday 1st) at 16.40. A severe weather warning is out predicting another 10cm of snow falling tomorrow. Fingers firmly crossed again.

It's hard to twiddle your thumbs when your fingers are crossed

Well, on the plus side, Edinburgh has never looked lovelier and the two feet of snow means my garden now looks just as good as those of all my neighbours. The boys are delighted because all the schools are closed so they have been out throwing snow around, sledging and burying each other up to the neck in snowdrifts (fortunately we've discovered that we can find the hidden boys by looking for their breath pluming upwards).

On the downside, I kind of feel cheated of my day off for St Andrew's day since I can't actually go anywhere. And worst of all, my parents are supposed to be on the 18.10pm flight to Heathrow this evening to catch their connection to Australia. They are going to spend 5 weeks with my brother. At least, that is the plan.

They sensibly left Livingston early yesterday and came to stay with us in Edinburgh - they were snowed in for about two weeks last winter and didn't want to risk getting stuck again. We live pretty much right on a major road so things have to be very bad indeed if you can't get out of our driveway.

Today, however, the airport is closed, the trains are not really running and the major motorway between Edinburgh and Glasgow is closed as are most of the other major roads in Scotland. Nothing much is moving. We are therefore refreshing the Edinburgh Airport Twitter updates every 5 minutes and keeping our fingers crossed that the runway will open soon. I love my parents but would really rather not have to put them up again tonight!

Yummmm! I think.

I bought some Purple Majesty potatoes the other day. Because, although they are rather gimmicky, they were on special offer in Sainsbury's. And they were undeniably purple. So with dinner tonight we had purple mashed potato.


Astonishingly, the boys scoffed them down without complaint. Plates were licked clean. Huh.

So if I understand this correctly, expecting my sons to eat anything green is completely unreasonable. However, offer them something that looks like a Play-Doh meal concocted by an enthusiastic three year old and they're sold. I am now waiting with bated breath for the invention of fluorescent pink cabbage.

Drat those pesky kids

I have just spent the evening playing three card brag with the boys. We raided the old Fauchon biscuit tin in the kitchen for pennies and tuppences to gamble with, just like I used to do with my granny when I was little.

The little cardsharps just cleaned me out. So I sent them to bed. (Can't do that in Las Vegas, now can you?!)

Good news

Not a proper post today, just two bits of news that made me happy. The first one because I have a dyscalculic son and most people have never even heard of dyscalculia. It is rare to read anything about the condition at all, never mind reading that they might be figuring out how to deal with it.

And the second one just proves that Canadian people really are generally wonderful.