familytastic!

Well, as another New Year rolls around, it'll be just Mike and I as all our kids - who are now adults - have lives and will be out celebrating.

Us? We'll most likely be asleep as the bells chime in the New Year with the phone a few inches from my ear in case...

No matter how old they get, I always worry when they're out, especially when I know a good deal of alcohol is going to be involved.

It seems I hardly spend much time with Rachel. If I'm going out somewhere, it's usually the boys who come with me, and mostly Daniel.

So, how surprised was I when I suggested she come out for a walk with me, and she didn't go absolutely nuts. Normally, such an innocuous request would be met with a fit of hysterics, making it pointless to even bother dragging her out the front door. But on Sunday, she placidly nodded her head and said, "Yeah, it'd be nice to get some fresh air." Then wandered off to get her coat.

Normally, I take a fairly long walk out round the fields where we live, so I took her in that direction. We rambled down the road, intermittently chatting and sometimes falling into silence. Rach was busily inspecting the changes in the countryside because of the impending winter - I showed her the apple trees where the crab apples were rotting on the ground where they'd fallen weeks ago.

Do you ever wonder what your children are thinking at any given time? I bet you do.

I had one of those moments at the weekend - I took Dan and Jake into Belfast to take the bus home for a change. You know, have a little adventure on the bus with the boys.

But we had about an hour to wait for the next bus home, so I took them across the road to Subway for a quickie snack and a drink of juice. The Subway in Great Victoria Street is a busy place. There's a lot of pedestrian traffic, and people coming and going from the shop itself.

Since my kids were little, Christmas has been a huge event with no expense spared. With having three of them, in past years our Christmas tree has been almost lifted off the ground by the amount of presents under and around it on Christmas morning, however, this year, out of necessity, we’ve come over all Scrooge-like and decided between us to spend no more than £50 on each other.

Someone asked me recently, “If you knew then what you know now, would you still have had kids?”

It’s a question that I couldn’t answer but it’s bugged me ever since. Would I?

We're getting a little tired recently of friends who ask for favours and never offer help in return. A favour here, a favour there. It all adds up.

As a couple, we take the same attitude to asking favours as we do to borrowing or lending money. We never ask. We don't depend on anybody but ourselves. But conversely, people rely on us and ask for favours on a regular basis. They never seem to factor in that we're trying to build a business and could do with a break ourselves. And the idea of offering to help us out every once in a while seems to be a foreign concept.

Last year, when the time came to put in application forms for primary and nursery schools I filled one in for our youngest lad Daniel. I knew that his birthday narrowly missed the cut off date of the 1st of July and that technically he was about a month too young to start nursery this year, but I thought "what the heck" and submitted a form on the off-chance.

Of all our children, Jake is a wiry young fellow. Something about him is wildly energetic, and I've always felt that when he becomes grumpy at home, it's because he's bored and needs to stretch his legs.

Last night, after his friend had gone home for the evening, I noticed Jake looking grumpy and lost. Rather than allow him to wallow in his bad mood, I told him to put on his coat and we'd go for a walk. We live on the edge of town, and as we leave our street, there's a little loop road that leads us out of town and back in again. A short walk of about an hour in total.

After finally, after wrestling the reluctant youngster into his coat, we left the house. There was a moment of near-mutiny when he realised we weren't taking the car, but Jake's generally quite pliable and we started off on our walk.

I stumbled across this post over on Ririan Project today about the 7 habits of highly successful fathers.

Funnily enough, when we first started a family, I picked up that book by Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Families. While it was an interesting read, I never got to the end of it. It's on my to-do list for when I start working from home.

Ririan's post borrows heavily from the Covey formula, and it's an inspiring read. However, I do disagree with his first point, keeping stress to yourself. OK, it's one thing to not let your mood impact your family, but I try to talk to our children about what's going on in my life.

I came home quite tired from work the other day and explained that I'd had a hard day at work. We briefly chatted about why my day had been so difficult. While it's important to let the children get on with the business of being kids, part of being in a family is sharing your emotions, and I'd like to think the kids can come back to me and talk about their lives too.

I wrote this post back in 2005 on my first blog, and our then 3-and-a-half year old daughter asked me what I did at work that day...

At the ripe ol’ age of 28, I’ve grown accustomed to thinking of myself as a highly skilled IT Manager and a not bad programmer and web designer. When asked, I describe my job as the management of ALL aspects of the network. From the day-to-day support and troubleshooting to the future IT strategy, you’ll find me there, making it all work….