Hi everyone,

It's been ages since we last did a post. We've had visitors, Max's birthday, Christmas, loads and loads of snow, hail, ice and wind since then.

Bob, Tom's dad, came to stay in November. It was great. He went to various New York sporting events with Tom, went to see Gil Scott Heron with me and we all went to museums together. It was lovely spending time with him and watching him playing with the boys. We all really missed him when he left.

My lovely friend Olivia came for the week before Christmas. Unfortunately, her visit coincided with when New York's winter weather started and the snottiest stage of the boys' colds. They weren't at their most beautiful. Inevitably, she got a cold too and spent most of her visit apartment bound - although she did help me with Christmas shopping the day before Christmas Eve in a mall in New Jersey. It was so fantastic to see her. It felt like when she used to come and stay with us in London. I'd really missed her warmth and sense of humour. The thing I still can't get used to about being over here is being so far away from all our amazing friends and family.

Max's birthday was fun, if a little stressful in preparation. I organised my first indoor children's party not in a school. We had 8 nearly 2 year olds and 4 year olds and their parents. I think a good time was had by all - but it was pretty manic.

Christmas was really civilised. The boys woke up at a very respectable 8 o'clock. Sam woke up first and then woke Max up and gave him his stocking. They made present opening last all day. They opened a present, played together with it for an hour and then went for the next one. I know it's not always going to be that peaceful. It was really lovely - just too far away from everyone.

Winter here has been pretty brutal and relentless in its coldness. It was warmer than England for the first part of December. Then on Boxing Day, it snowed all day and night along with with really strong winds. We took the boys out to play in it, but only lasted 7 minutes. Max got blown over and it was no fun at all. It was really beautiful to watch from inside though. The next day it finally settled and Sam and I went out to play Antarctic explorers. He stepped onto a pavement that no-one had walked on and the snow came up to Sam's chest. It still hasn't melted. There are big grey dirty icy piles of the stuff everywhere with dog poo and litter hiding in it which are irresistable to Sam and his friends. We've had 2 snowfalls of more than 20" and lots of this New York phenomenon called 'Wintry Mix' which consists of hail, wind, rain, snow and everything cold and nasty. There was a snow day one day which was lovely. We met up with some children from Sam's class and did sledging and made snowmen and it was great fun. Everywhere we went there were jubilant children and teenagers free for a day.

Winter has been especially hard for the children, because it has been hard to go out and play as much as they would like. We have had loads and loads of play dates with children who live in our building in each other's apartments. Also, Bob very kindly bought us all a year's membership for Brooklyn's Children's Museum which also gets us into other museums and sights around America. We've already used loads including to visit the Intrepid which is a massive aircraft carrier that was bombed by Kamikaze planes in World War 2. We joined a community centre and have gone swimming loads. About 2 weeks ago, Sam discarded his float and noodle and started swimming on his own. It was ever so impressive. We were so proud, I had tears in my eyes.

Tom and Sam went skiing with one of Sam's friends and his Dad for the day at a ski resort 2 hours drive away. Everyone had loads of fun, despite lots of falling over!

Something we forgot to mention in our autumn post was the US Open tennis. Both Tom and I went to an evening session, Tom with some friends from work and me with Karen. Tom saw home favourite Andy Roddick lose in the second round and the next night I saw Novak Djokovic win. During the match, a block away from where I was sitting there was a fight in the seats. It was unbelievable with play stopping as the two rolled down the stands. Here is a video. It changes from an arguement to a fight 1min in. Needless to say the US Open is very different from Wimbledon...

Here are a collection of our winter photos.

Hope you are all well. Roll on Spring!!! We'll be back soon with a post and photos from our holiday to Mexico.