Happy New Year

Happy New Year from us all. Daisy and Skye have been very excited waiting for the new year – they both wanted to see fireworks, but I told them not to get their hopes up as they'd have to be pretty big fireworks for us to see them. Skye reckoned she'd seen them advertised on the TV, so was hanging around the sitting room hoping it would be turned on, then fell asleep with Daisy and missed it all. She's blaming me, and won't believe there weren't and fireworks to see. What a pair

We've had a busy holiday – not as busy as I would have liked, but not too bad. We've still got Dougal, the naughty Westie from Wooler, with us so life has not been as relaxing as it might have been, but at least we've got out every day and all my sheep are OK (touch wood). Dougal is a proper little rascal though and would be teaching Daisy all sorts of naughty tricks if it wasn't for Skye and me keeping him under our paws, but thankfully when he gets back from his afternoon walk, he's usually too tired to get up to anything he shouldn't.

I'm full of hope for this year –joy, joy, joy. I just KNOW it's going to be busy, which is just great.

We've got more lambing sheep than ever and we've got no snow at all so far, so the hay's lasting really well. It's been really windy, but I'm just having to learn to cope with that, and I'm used to not having Skye helping with any work – just as well, mind you, as her 'missing the fireworks' strike seems as though it might be the first of many attempts to skive off work. I think Daisy is encouraging her so they can play all day...which suits me just fine.