Boys toys

As a blogger whose areas of interest are the military, childcare and construction I realise that I have a fairly niche target audience. In fact if you were to draw a big Venn diagram on the ground probably the only person stood in the central intersection would be me (with the dog who follows me everywhere and a cup of tea in hand). Well today I manage to combine both military and childcare with my son's Christmas present.

Having turned 3 a couple of months ago, this is the first Christmas that he has really understood what it's all about meaning that we have to start thinking about things in more detail. For instance I remember as a small child being suspicious that Father Christmas and my parents used the same wrapping paper so have insisted that we use different paper for the stocking to everything else.

The biggest thing to think of is choice of presents. He already has quite a lot of "stuff" so we wanted to have one main present rather lots of smaller things. Annoyingly most of our ideas were for smaller things which at least helped write a list for the rest of the family to get him. We know he wants the things on the list as we sat down with the Argos catalogue and he picked out a few things he liked with us suggesting things we knew he was already getting (thankfully he never said no to any suggestions).

We finally came up with the idea of a ride on electric car. When we go to playgroup he loves the pedal cars so I think he'll enjoy this even more. The one we eventually settled on was a jeep that fired rockets. When I served in Afghanistan I saw a quad bike with a belt fed grenade launcher on the back and thought it looked like the most fun toy ever. Unfortunately when we looked into it that one didn't have a big enough motor so we have chosen the one pictured. My wife was pleased that this one comes without attached weaponry and probably I am too. I do have an idea about pintel mounting a nerf gun onto the front. Although as I would be the person being shot and the looks of disapproval I would get, we'll see...

Post the First

I write this as I sit at the kitchen table thinking that there are so many more important things to do, especially as it is 6 days to Christmas. On my to do list is;

Post Christmas presents, which with hindsight I should have done when walking the dog.

Work out how to move electrical cable and pipe work in the ceiling before the builder comes tomorrow, otherwise I sleeping in a bedroom with no ceiling over Christmas having given up mine to my mother who will be visiting. H

Hang up some washing.

Get keys back from the tenant in a rental property who informed me that on Saturday she is moving out and then try and clean it and re rent it before Christmas.

Put more washing on.

Send some emails regarding my role as an Army Reservist, although I suspect this close to Christmas everyone will be on leave, at least I will have a ready made self justification for nobody responding. I also bought some Regimental silver in an on-line auction. If you have ever bid on eBay it was very similar. Things stayed reasonably priced until a day to go then prices started to rocket, which is why despite never having smoked in my life I am now the proud owner of a pair of ashtrays. If you ever visited, they were always intended for nibbles, the dips on the sides are to rest your olive picks.

Do some Christmas shopping, I started ages ago and was on top of it, now Christmas is starting to loom.

Return my contract regarding guest lecturing at University. See 2 points up.

Make some pastry for a corn beef pie that my father in law who is staying is making for dinner. Have I been tricked? Surely the tricky part of a corn beef pie is the pastry, after that isn'tit just throw in some corn beef and potatoes?

All this before picking my son up from nursery, although the squeal of delight "it's my daddy" when I arrive makes it all worthwhile.

So as you can see I need to get on and I am sure that you do to, so for now, goodbye...

Maybe I will make a quick cuppa first.