I'm sure you have all given reading this by now

But here I am again.

The reason this blog stopped for a while was really a series of unfortunate circumstances which took most of my time and energy and hopefully have passed for a while.

In November I got shingles. If you've had this the enough said. If you haven't, may you not, and if you have children, get them immunised against chickenpox which is a minor children's illness so they can never get shingles which is a very nasty and extremely painful affliction for adults.

December went to worst, starting with Vik having another kidney stone and followed a few days later by Kate being hospatilised with severe abdominal pain. They discovered a number of things but they think the main source of the issue is a food intolerance, probably gluten. As we already have one daughter officially diagnosed with a gluten and dairy intolerance this wasn't a surprise and had already noticed that a lot of Kate's symptoms were similar to those for Crohn's disease.

With Christmas approaching, Tamara got Norovirus which she had over the festive period recovering enough by the 27th to nurse the rest of us while we had it.