Sometimes we need to press the 'pause' button

I haven't written so much recently, because I have had several things going on personally that have distracted my attention and focused it rather sharply on where it needs to be.
Of course, in such a large family, when the pause button is pressed, this inevitably means that there is then a backlog of jobs that need to be done, when one resumes normal life again.

I am somewhere in between the two at present and with Christmas now looming on the horizon, my original smugness at being so organised has subsequently evaporated.
I am on near panic mode, or at least I will be by the end of the week.
Coupled with the fact the twins-who-never-sleep have decided to up their nigh time antics to a level where some nights we have just dealt with one after the other ALL night, and I mean ALL NIGHT!
Too their credit, they are so charming and adorable during the day it is hard to feel any animosity towards them, or maybe I am just too tired.
I can do tired, and really tired, but I think my levels of exhaustion hit and all time, 24 year childbearing low by last weekend.

As I said, sometimes life takes over.
On Monday, I had to drop work, and rearrange appointments to attend my friends mum's funeral in London. Her mother had been very kind to me as a child and obviously throughout the years we have kept in touch. It was an extremely moving service and although sad, she was an incredible lady who had lived her life too the full.
I left home at 6am and arrived back at 10pm.

On the way home, I walked from Waterloo Station along the Embankment filled with row upon row of Christmas markets, over Waterloo Bridge and through Covent Gardens and Leicester Square, old haunts as a teenager and enjoyable as for once I was on my own and not being pulled away every 2.5 seconds.

For all that, as I often find , after a couple of hours on my own, that was enough, I missed the children and all that was happening with them, so headed back to Euston and my busy, mad. chaotic life.
When we press the pause button and events take over, it gives us time to reflect, to put things once again in order and to appreciate what really matters, where to place our energy and what a waste other things really are.

At this time of year, it is especially good to do this, to put behind the mistakes and to know that a new year can bring a new start, a chance to do things differently and to make changes.

I have had a little time to sit back and reflect and feel all the better for having done so.