Actually the 10th. See the lords leaping (is it?)

Ignore the date at the top of this, which I think will be the 11th. I was busy uploading photos at nearly midnight on the 10th when this photo of Daughter 2 arrived by email from her friend and I got distracted and loaded photos in the wrong order. When I realised, I just got rid of the post to start again and then noticed that it was 00.01. Drat.

Anyway, this is Daughter 2 in London having a Christmas crafty evening with her chums. Not sure what that mini balloon is in her hand.

A smaller iceberg made its appearance today.

And another card of mysterious shapes.

Mr Life sets his mind to the problem.

Sirius helps.

Sirius gets bored. You may notice that we have another helping of that nasty white stuff on the ground outside. Both cats strongly disapprove.

Look: those traditional friends, the hippo* and the polar bear, have a chat before trotting off to the manger.

*You're entirely right, Marcheline - it is indeed a rhino!! And despite your charitable interpretation of the situation, no, I didn't get it wrong to see if anyone was paying attention (though sadly, you were the only one who was - except Mr Life, who has just this minute come in to point out my error). At the age of 61, I seem to have discovered that I suffer from dysanimalia or at least dysbiganimalia. Clearly I don't watch enough David Attenborough programmes...

Sirius is squeaking at me (distracting me from my animal identification abilities, presumably). The next stage in his campaign to get my attention is scratching the chair and if I ignore this, he takes a flying leap on to on my shoulders. This can be quite painful. I shall go and administer the prawns which he knows are in the fridge.

Ow!!! Too late.