It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

It's got to that time of year when the weeks rush past as if just weekends and the weekends are so busy they're like weeks.

A brief resume.

The bluebells arrived (pictured). Four chatty ladies with fluffy blue (ish) feathers to fill Mum's new hen house with cackles and squawks and big brown eggs.

Then H8 had a tummy bug, the fast and furious sort which woke all of us up at 1am on Saturday and provided more cleaning and laundry duties than I would wish for the wee small hours. She was ill for the rest of the night and Brian manfully offered to stay up with her so at least one of us could get some sleep. At 3am the battery went in the smoke alarm and between tending to H8 he fetched the clanky metal ladder, climbed to the highest point of the house and fixed it. R7 and I slept through it all.

On Saturday morning R7 and I went off to a coffee morning in aid of St Meilyr's Church, Llysyfran, and to launch its new website built by Lindsay who hosted the event in her lovely home with her partner Jon and various members of their wider family.

In the afternoon R7 and I met up with Lins again and her wider family at Linda Norris's gallery for a glass Christmas decoration making workshop. Linda is an incredibly talented artist and this workshop was for making pretty things from fused glass which turned out to be easy, relaxing and highly addictive. We're picking up the results on Wednesday when H8 will get her turn as she missed it on Saturday.

When R7 and I got home Brian had finished the ironing I've been putting off for a month (ahem, at least) and he had done the rest of the week's washing too, which was all dried, folded and put away. He had vacuumed the house, fed and watered all of the animals and then cooked dinner. I think I'll keep him.

Sunday's long run is usually just me and my iPod but this time I was joined by Lins' cousin Tracy and her daughter Louise. Tracy is has run marathons (London, New Zealand) and has a sub-two hour half marathon PB. Louise, like me, has run the Cardiff half, so I was in good company. It was very icy, particularly on the highest part of the route which led me to compare us to Bambi on ice. Tracy, however, was referencing the skating hippos from Fantasia. Hmm. They are two lovely people and it was terrific fun despite the conditions. It really made me think that I must find myself some regular training companions.

In the afternoon, H8 being much recovered, we went to Haverfordwest to retrieve R7's favourite hat from M&S lost property and buy a Christmas tree. Bri muttered a bit about the cost of the tree (five feet of glorious Nordmann fir) but he stopped at the sight of the girls skipping happily ahead singing: "We've got the Christmas tree" over and over in happy little voices.

We then went into Pets R Us (as I prefer to call it) and cooed over the new batch of baby guinea pigs. We're all a bit besotted with GPs (I used to breed and show them). Unfortunately we haven't the room for more or we'd have lots (I once had 28) and we can't (at the moment) afford a bigger GP house. Although I did check with our two boy GPs when we got home and they said they could find room for a couple of lady pigs. Naughty boys. Maybe one day...

That really was only a weekend...