Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

Merry Christmas to you all!! Jude, Lizzie and I are in the UK enjoying our time in the snow. We came home at the beginning of December for Jude as he had to have an operation.

He went to Birmingham Children's Hospital on the 8th December. His operation was at lunch time, my Dad and I went with him into the theatre and watch him go to sleep and then had to leave him there all on his own, which for me was a bit overwhelming, we then had to sit in the ward to wait for him to return. He came back all snuggled up and fast asleep, he woke up and ate loads of food and was able to go home, he played while we waited for our lift home and he coped with the whole ordeal really well. We kept him on drugs for a week which helped with the pain, he rarely cried but when he did he would say "it's hurting me mummy" and hold me tight until it stopped, generally it was fine and the operation was successful and I was very proud of the way he coped with it all.

We are staying with my brother in Worcester, both of my brother's live in the area and they both have children. So Lizzie and Jude are having lots of fun playing with all their cousins. You can see them in the pictures.

The day after we arrived home we it was Judes 2nd Birthday and we had a little family party to celebrate. It was a nice day however I was quite tired to enjoy after the

Its been snowing this last week so we have been out sledging a lot. Today we found a big hill where I took Jude and Lizzie on my own it was great fun.

Its christmas time and we are able to celebrate it here in Kempsey with a lot of my family and my sister-in-law's family. I'm really excited about spending christmas here having a real traditional English Christmas. I haven't been able to celebrate christmas here for a long time so it's really nice even though half my heart is left behind in Uganda. We also are able to have a white christmas which has been great we have been doing a lot of sledging which I have enjoyed having children to take with me. They have enjoyed sledging but also have been very cold at times. We are hoping to go out again today for Christmas eve on a slope we found yesterday so hopefully we will all have great fun.

I've never been away from Uganda without having someone at home to look after the children. Its been a hard few months trying to organise homes for them. Diana was the most difficult, she is 6 years old and so we couldn't just place her anywhere. Grace and Akwedde have gone to somes freinds of ours where they love going and have great fun so that wasn't hard at all. Finally in the last days of arranging everything we found a place for Diana with our Canadian friends. They have two young children so Diana will have fun playing with them and they will also look after her with great care being westerners. Six of the boys the one's less likely to get into trouble have stayed at home with two of our African friends looking after them. 3 other boys have gone down to our Doctor friend in Mbale and one of our boys has gone home for the holidays to his family in Congo. Even though its hard to be away knowing I'm not with them for christmas I am sure they will have a good time together and we can have a special day when we go back.

This year has been a good year for all of us, everything has progressed well. In the new year Charles will be getting his A-level results and then will have to choose a course and a university to start in Aug '11. Rafiki, Isaac and Passier will be getting their o'level results and then will choose subjects and schools, so you can think of them all as they make difficult decisions. The rest of us will have no major changes and wiill continue into our normal routine but we hope that we all do well in 2011, the children to concentrate and work hard at school and for a small daycare and school we hope we may have a lot of new children and reach great standards throughout the year.

We wish you all a very happy christmas and we hope that your year 2011 will be a great one for you too. Thanks to all of you who support us it would be hard to live without you.