New Year 2007 Update

We are all well here at our flat in Enfield and I worked during the non-bank
holiday days over the festive period but other than that had an enjoyable
time. Philippa is now 5 and can add up 2 digit numbers (eg 34+16) vertically
which I'm quite pleased about as I try and make them do little bits of
numbers or reading/writing most mornings before the day begins. Philippa is
a very smart and buoyant girl who attracts gifts from children at school -
she received a Pooh bear for a Christmas present and the girl who gave it to
Philippa was not even one of the girls that Philippa had made close
aquaintance with and so Philippa did not even know the girl's name! She has
just also received a huge necklace from someone else!!! Christa is 3 (nearly
4, in April) and likewise is doing well although a little more sulky than
Philippa! They both play for hours and hours interspersed with crying at
each other for a perceived offence! Baby Philip is 1 and a half years old
now and a livlier more humorous character I do not know - he can sit on the
floor when I tell him to do so but promptly gets up the moment my eyes turn
away again! He also writes on the walls but other than that is brilliant
just to be around and all the girls in our church adore him!

We have a beautiful Ford Mondeo 2 litre black automatic and someone ran into
the back of it! The amazing thing was that the front of the offending car
was crushed quite badly but our car suffered literally only paintwork
damage!!! Zoe was shaken but otherwise unhurt, as was the offending driver
who it turned out was uninsured and passed fake contact details etc on to
Zoe in the street who was shaken badly enough to let him get away without
cottoning on to the fact that he was faking the fact that he was offering to
call the police if Zoe wanted to. Zoe eventually said no, let's settle
privately but of course the first thing I did was to check his mobile and it
was invalid; went to his address and someone else lived there as well! Our
insurance told us that his registration was showing as uninsured. But at
least Zoe and the car were relatively unscathed during the incident, just
our pockets were financially put out of sorts!