January turns out to be a busier month than most?!?!!!  not sure how that happened.....shouldn't we all be recluses at home avoiding alcohol and waiting for the weather to get better and nights to get lighter!?!?!!!

Thankfully no repetition of last january when the kids seemed to spend the whole month sick!
Conor gets a day off school to play in the Luxembourg schools chess tournament - Conor is the only representative from the international school (chess hasn't managed to breakthrough there yet!) and does amazingly well to win the  U11 tournament and comes 7th in the total competition (up to 18 year olds and a total of 70+ entrants!!) Millie relishes in wearing his medal as Conor is too embarassed to show it off!!!

Another cultural little visit is planned and a few of us head off to Metz in France to go to the Pompidou museum and the Bivouac exhibition.



I manage to escape for a night with 3 friends and we head off to Belgium for a spa weekend :-)

It was really fun and we all chatted far too much for the other guests trying to relax and have some peace and quiet!!!!!!

Boozy lunch and dinner so not much of a "healthy spa" trip but i managed to sleep until 10am......my "roomy" Cathy woke up at 8am apparently and was reading but I was away with the fairies and she tells me as soon as i stirred at 10am she started chatting so I didn't get a chance to go back to sleep!!!!!   I'm sure I would have slept all day!  Can you believe after heading off home after lunch I felt exhasted when I got home??!  not sure how that works!!

The following weekend we head off to the mountains of Les vosges for a couple of days skiing with some friends!  This year we managed to miss the Friday exodus from Luxembourg to France and so 2.5 hours later we arrive and meet our friends for dinner and the obligatory too much wine associated with any skiing hols!!  The sensible thing would have been to rent skis that night to avoid the morning queues............ho hum.......how we wished we hadn't been so dismissive of the idea the night before!  we eventually got out on the slopes...............................

Having become fairly niftty at packing and unpacking from all our jaunts here and there I just have time to get it all sorted before Ruby and I head off to the UK for 3 days!  Having not seen my Nana since the summer who is due to turn 104 in a couple of weeks, we made the trip over to Leeds/Bradford.......although leaving Luxembourg is obviously not the most straightforward of journeys (and getting up at 4.30am never seems a problem when booking the flights but at the time seems like the craziest thing ever with an almost 2-year old in tow!) we have a wait in Amsterdam where I relish my Starbucks coffee ;-)))))  We arrive Friday morning and visit my Nana who is unfortunately in hospital but thankfully recognises me and in a chatty mood (kind of making my €450 trip and middle of the night waking truly worthwhile :-))  To top the whole thing, snow falls during Saturday and almost mucks up my Saturday night plans (my friends hubby save the day and comes to collect me in his 4-wheel drive :-)) and gets me worried that I won't make it home on Sunday!!  I do make it home late on sunday but have to say I don't ever remember so much snow unforecast overnight in north England......typical huh?!