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Merry Christmas!

And a happy new year!

Toby as a snowflake for his first nativity play, refusing to pull any kind of sensible face!

Or Happy Twelfth Night, or Happy Epiphany, if Christmas and New Year seem like an aeon ago already.  Here, January 6th coincided nicely with Graham going back to work and Toby going back to preschool.  At least, I thought it did until I turned up at the village hall to find no one else there, and discovered I had missed a letter saying there was an inset day today.  Once I'd got over my initial panic that maybe he didn't start till next Monday, it was actually quite nice to have him around for an extra day.  He had to come to the doctor's with me, but he thought that was fantastic because there's a train set in the waiting room, and I was only getting a flu jab so it didn't take long.

I'm really glad so many of you enjoyed the Advent postings!  Your appreciative comments certainly kept me going.  I'm going to tell you now, though:  I am not a daily blogger!  I made it through, but only by reducing housework and many other things to bare subsistence levels, which is not a recipe for happiness in the long term.  And it takes up a lot of brain space, too!

Interestingly, it was probably more useful for those of you who read it than it was for me.  I was always thinking a day or two ahead, working out when to fit in the writing time, and focusing on how the different entries balanced each other.  Some of the actual writing was very satisfying (the Desiring poem was a highlight for me), some was fun (Thirsting, for example) and some was just hard slog (I think Travailing got re-written about three times).  So the experience for me was akin to hosting a party; I was too busy greeting people, topping up their drinks and making sure the sausage rolls were hot to completely relax and enjoy myself.  But it was generally enjoyable and I'm happy that everyone else had a good time!

Well, consider that to be the "making of" documentary on the Advent DVD.  And a bit of a kick-start so that I don't still have the Christmas Day post topping my blog at the end of January!  Having said that daily blogging is far too much, I really would like to manage once or twice weekly, so watch this space and feel free to nag me on Facebook if nothing has happened for a while.

And finally, something I didn't know: traditionally the upcoming moveable feasts of the church year were proclaimed on Epiphany.  So here you go - your handy guide to when Easter falls in 2014.

Epiphany Proclamation

(Seriously, we don't get Pancake Day till March?  What's that all about?)
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