Hello little Monkeys !

How are you both doing today ? I hope great …

Well boys I have made you a video update today but am not able to upload it on the blog for some strange reason , guess I have some google-ing to do to figure out what I am doing wrong ..,so watch this space … Lol

The picture today is care of Ouma again , she thought you two would love it !

So I guess you two are having a super day playing with all your cool new stuff.. I hope you are sharing with each other also …. Lol I know you both are not that great yet at the sharing thing but I am pretty sure you will get there in the long run….

It’s been a lovely cool day here again , must admit it works for me rather than being boiling hot…

We have just had a lazy day here to be honest in front of the telly , Oupa loves bait cars but luckily it has not been on yet today … Lol

Not sure what you both are doing the next couple of days but I hope the weather is ok for you to maybe go to the Zoo or play park for some outside fun also as little men should..

O before I forget I bought you some cool wildlife DVDs today , you should get them next week I guess , all the little ones here love them so I hope you two will like them also …

So I did not get any pictures of you both on Christmas Day , I guess I should have known it will not happen but no worries I have my memories and I know you both would have had a lovely time …

I see there is still loads of houses without power in the UK , I hope you two are not effected by the storms and that you are happy and safe …….and well looked after…

Was really looking forward to sending you the video today , really sorry I was not able to do so but as I said I will keep trying….

Well boys I hope you have loads of fun the rest of this afternoon , I am sure you must be well busy with all the excitement of the past two days…..Just sorry again I was not allowed to see you or speak with you both … Maybe next year hey boys ….who knows…

As always my little champs I really hope to see you both a little later under our big old green tree in dream land , so keen to see you both and give you a dream cuddle ……and tell you how much I miss and love you both….

Night , night monkeys … Happy place dreams full of fun and maybe even us 3 spending some normal time together …..

Love you both to the moon and back a billion times…..

Love you pals …. Always..

Dad xx

Good morning Oliver and Oscar ,

We just want to wish you both a Merry Christmas and trust it will be a fun filled day for you both.

Please take care little ones !

From Ouma and Oupa from far , far way

Loads of hugs and kisses

Xxxxxxxxxxxx

Morning boys , I know it’s 6 am but I am sure you both are up and about to see if Santa came !

Just want to wish you both a very Merry Christmas and tell you both how much I love you and miss you and sorry again that I am not allowed to share in this special day with you both!

Thank you for the little email I assume mum or her spokes person sent last night from you both , broke my heart even more !

Have a fun day boys , play your little hearts out !

Love you both always ….

Dad xx

Why you shouldn’t let your children see you drinking this Christmas: It could turn them into problem drinkers like me, says PHIL ROBINSON
Phil doesn’t drink in front of his sons because of alcohol’s harmful effects
There’s been a ‘meteoric rise’ in the number of alcohol-related deaths
This is because of young people drinking heavily in their teens
A survey reveals that one in five 11 to 15-year-olds who had recently drunk had had alcohol bought for them by their parents
By PHIL ROBINSON

PUBLISHED: 22:46 GMT, 22 December 2013 | UPDATED: 22:47 GMT, 22 December 2013
65 shares 94View

What did you drink at the weekend? A pre-Christmas glass of mulled wine? A warming mug of eggnog? Over the next couple of days, perhaps you’ll have a Buck’s Fizz at breakfast and a cheeky pre-lunch sherry.
Maybe there will even be a Baileys as you sink into the sofa after downing several glasses of wine with your turkey. After all, ’tis the season to be merry.

Sober celebration: Phil, with his three sons, refuses to drink in front of them
But have you ever stopped to think about the effect all this conspicuous consumption of alcohol – inextricably linked, as it is, to both celebration and relaxation – has upon the children in your family?
I was just ten when I stole my first drink at a family wedding in 1983, but even now I can remember how much I wanted to be a part of this grown-up, glamorous world – one that was accompanied by the clattering of ice and chinking of glasses.
In a pattern that would continue for the next 20 years – a period in which I became dangerously and excessively reliant on alcohol – I wasn’t able to stop at one drink. While the adults danced, I toured the room looking for more.

The tables were groaning with glasses of all shapes and sizes. I picked up a goblet of Liebfraumilch, the then-ubiquitous sweet German wine.

I took my first sip: it tasted like ice-cold apple juice. I glugged down the rest and wobbled around the table sipping rum and Cokes (more please), gin and tonics with a bitter tang (no thanks), and finished at least two glasses of sherry, which tasted like cough syrup.
Nobody seemed to notice, and I wanted to try them all, every drink that I’d seen adults with, both in real life and the glamorous world of TV.
It was only staring at the blurred landscape on the car ride home that I became aware of my altered reality and threw up. Mum blamed it on too much trifle.

Alcohol is everywhere: Phil believes his entire generation is bringing up its children to see drink as a part of everyday life
Had my parents known what I had been up to, I’d have been severely punished. Even though I felt ill, I didn’t associate this with alcohol – all I remembered was the buzz, the warm contentment.
We were all a little naive about health in the Eighties – still smoking, drinking, and eating red meat most nights of the week. But in the health-conscious 21st century, with all we now know, you might assume society is more savvy, sensible and strict about children and alcohol.
It seems not.
In November this year, two shocking pieces of research were published. One study revealed that one in five 11 to 15-year-olds who had drunk alcohol in the previous month said it had been bought for them by their parents.
Meanwhile, Britain’s top liver disease expert, Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, reported a ‘meteoric rise’ in alcohol-related deaths as a result of young people drinking heavily in their teens.
‘Liver specialists are seeing people as young as in their 20s dying due to alcohol,’ he said. ‘If the increase carries on at the same rate, we could see up to a quarter of a million preventable deaths from liver disease in the next 20 years.’

Tanked up Brits: In 2004 it was estimated that ech adult consumed about 11.5 litres of alcohol that year

Sadly, I wasn’t surprised. My entire generation is bringing up its children to see drink as a part of everyday life – and at no time more so than at Christmas, when it’s estimated that the average adult will spend £75 on drink.
Alcohol is everywhere and TV advertising, filled with beautiful people happily quaffing drink, is the beating heart of our booze-worshipping culture.
As a child, my brain was full of slogans: lager that stays sharp to the bottom of the glass, the amber nectar. The Webster’s Yorkshire bitter whippet made me laugh, and I wanted to follow the Hoffmeister lager bear. The beer, wine and spirits industry and supermarkets spend £800 million a year on TV advertising, which generates a whopping £37.7 billion a year in revenue.
Companies promote alcohol as the magic key to affluence, togetherness and fun; the natural accompaniment for every imaginable family occasion.
The truth is that alcohol all too easily becomes the enemy of easy socialising. It exacerbates depression and having too much causes you to become withdrawn to the point where you can only socialise comfortably by being drunk.
But children bombarded by advertising images get only one side of the story. The problem took off in my parents’ generation. Raised in the Fifties, where the only alcohol in the house was a bottle of Advocaat that lived in a cupboard until Christmas, they regarded drinking as a treat. Wine was too expensive and the cheap stuff was unpalatable.
During the Eighties boom, however, much of the country – my parents included – experienced a boost in household income. They could now afford to drink regularly, and with this new affluence came what seemed like a more glamorous lifestyle.

Indoctrinating: Alcohol is promoted as a reward that will make grumpy people happy and sad people laugh
My favourite childhood memories were watching Mum, a teacher, and Dad, a director at an engineering firm, spending Friday night with our neighbours, mostly professionals and small business owners. I remember them laughing as they drank to wind down at the end of the week. To a child, the message that alcohol was a reward was clear: it made grumpy people happy, sad people laugh. It was a powerful, wordless form of indoctrination.
I kept drinking sneakily at every family occasion. And by the age of 14, I was adept at helping myself at parties while the adults weren’t looking. I can’t remember a time that my school friends or I couldn’t get our hands on alcohol. There was so much booze sloshing around our parents’ homes that no one needed to set foot in an off-licence.
Our parents knew nothing. While we were allowed a small beer or shandy on a special occasion, they would never have expected we would take such liberties with their trust. And no one warned us about the perils of alcohol.
We were lectured on the deadly threat of heroin, but never about the nation’s fix of choice: a drug that kills 10,000 people a year and is responsible for one-third of all hospital admissions. By the time I went to college I had no boundaries around alcohol.
A group of us who drank with equal ferocity would head out for a fry-up on a Saturday morning to mop up our hangovers and then wait for the pubs to open again at 11 am. It seemed normal.
Of my close-knit circle of five friends, three of us went on to develop alcohol and substance abuse issues in our 20s.
After college, I continued to drink heavily through the first half of my 20s until I found myself in a doctor’s surgery in 1998 in the grip of a nervous breakdown.

Booze-worshipping culture: The beer, wine and spirits industry and supermarkets spend £800 million a year on TV advertising
My doctor asked how many drinks are too many and I replied: ‘Eight?’ He said: ‘One is too many – if you are an alcoholic.’ Of course, I was not a full-blown alcoholic, but did I have a problem with alcohol? You bet!
So I quit drinking for the next ten years, determined to clean my life up. I believe quitting alcohol remains the most important move anyone can make to resurrect their mental and physical well-being.
The process of recovery means rejecting old habits, staying away from pubs and nightclubs. You feel lost and lonely, often. The upside is that you see your old self with some clarity. I also watched the drinking of my friends sky-rocket.
Drink is everywhere. I remember attending the Christmas play at my three-year-old son’s nursery and being offered mulled wine.

Dangerous: There has been a ‘meteoric rise’ in alcohol-related deaths as a result of young people drinking heavily in their teens
Take your children to a toddler’s party and there’s a good chance adults will be offered a glass of wine or a bottle of beer. This makes me despair. Today’s children rarely see adults socialising without a drink. We are teaching our children that booze belongs everywhere.
My wife never saw her parents drink when she was growing up, as they were both teetotal. As a result, she has no impulse to do so herself. Dinner is complete without a bottle of red. No birthday party requires champagne.
After a decade without alcohol, I started drinking again a year ago because I felt healthy enough to do so. These days I drink (and even get drunk) occasionally with friends, but rarely at home in front of my three sons, aged seven, nine and 11.
If I want a drink, I have to make a conscious effort to go to the pub. Buying wine and beer at the supermarket and putting it in the fridge next to the orange juice normalises an addictive drug. It is the surest route to developing a family habit. Instead, I am a happy, occasional drinker. I don’t preach abstinence to my sons, but I do think they need to know the dangers.
If they ask me about alcohol, I share some of the details that the supermarkets and brewing giants don’t care to mention. That alcohol is habit forming; that it makes you look ropey and old; and causes physical diseases and mental illnesses in otherwise healthy people. The message is this: do as I do – not as I did.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2528033/Why-shouldnt-let-children-drinking-Christmas-It-turn-problem-drinkers-like-says-PHIL-ROBINSON.html#ixzz2oH7xZqHL
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Hello Boys

How are my champs doing on this lovely lazy Sunday afternoon ? I hope oki doki ….

Well I just got back from brunch with the Jenkings 5 , lol and David and Claire and their two little men , haven’t seen them for years , the stay in Denver now… The little Jenkings 3 was well excited about the gifts I bought them , but I have said they can’t open them until Christmas Eve , lol don’t think it will work but hey I tried , was lovely spending time with them all and seeing all the little ones play at the huge play area and emptying their mum and dads wallets of R 5.00 coins for the play ball vending machine …. Reminded me of the machine you two loved to mess around with at the soft play we use to go to on Sunday mornings , with James and Katherine and Harrison,

I wonder if you have seen Harrison since you left Horsham ,makes me smile when I think how he wanted to go on the soft play holding my hand and you Oliver just wanted to go with James down the big slide , Oscar I use to smile so much as you were dead happy playing on the ground level , I guess that’s all changed now and you must have become a bit of daredevil yourself … Guess I will never get to see or experience those type of moments with you two again ,thanks to mum and Steve and their big plan to brake our bond ……

O before I forget mum emailed me or I guess Steve at 3 am this morning with some elf electronic greeting card but I am not able to open it on my iPad , not sure what it was or what it was about and why all of sudden , mum or should I say Steve her official spokes person decided to email me , but when I email them to ask about you both and Oliver’s operation they ignore me , so I guess they need to decide if we are communicating or not , I personally want nothing to do with either of them in my life again seeing that they will not even allow me now to see or get pictures of you both… But you know what boys however hard they try they can’t erase my memories or my heart , I know they would love to but that is one thing neither of them can ever do , please always remember that they can’t do it to you either how ever hard they try….

Your blog had more than 1500 visitors yesterday , makes me so proud to know that there is so many people all over the world that care and love you both although some of them have and I guess will never meet you , you had 69 people just from Ireland yesterday ….

I digress , the picture today made me smile , hope it shows you both that sometimes we do things in our own way in Africa … No reindeer needed lol …. Hope you two find it a little funny also…

Well boys I hope you had a nice fun ,safe happy day whatever you did , and I hope that the next couple of days will be great fun full of excitement waiting for Santa ,sorry that I am not allowed to share in any of it with you … Maybe one day boys … Who knows….

So boys as always I hope to see you both a little later under our big old green tree in dream land …. Can’t wait to hold you both for a little bit and tell you that I love you….

Night, night pals , sweet happy place dreams as always …..

I love and miss you both mega huge big truck loads full … Always….

Love you champs …..

Dad xxx

Ps , Ouma asked that I send you the picture below and a huge cuddle from her and Oupa also xx

Hello Little O’s ,

How are my champs doing today ? I really hope well..

Justine posted the picture on her Facebook yesterday , thought it was very appropriate to our 3 ‘s situation…. Maybe one day boys ……

So what have you two done on this great Saturday ? Maybe you went to the Zoo or the soft play or maybe you have just been clowning around at home in your playroom.. Whatever you did I hope you had a fantastic time … Full of smiles and happy times….

I had a very nice night with Brett and Sanet last night, was great seeing them again , I think they would love to meet you both one day also , you never know ….

Tomorrow I am going for brunch with the Jenkings family and all the little ones , looking forward to seeing Maddison and the twins Liam and McKenna, Liam makes me smile so much as all he wants to do is play with a bucket of water and a brush and then he just keeps cleaning stuff all the time he is such a cutie, McKenna is a little bit more reserved but lovely , I can’t believe how big Maddison is now , I think when mum and I saw her last she was a little older then what you both are now , she is gorgeous…. We said we will go somewhere where the little ones can play and run wild while we have brunch , so should be great fun…..

I did not get up to much today , had a bit of a late start , just felt like I needed to sleep a bit later ,I guess holiday mode is starting to set in , which I guess is not so bad thing after all the events of the last year……

I hope you two are being good boys and that you have your carrots , biscuits and milk on standby for the big visit next week …. Not long now ….. I wonder if you two realise , I guess you are old enough this year to know something fun and festive is happening next week ….

I saw Daniel had a school play at his school , made me think if you two had one at school before the shut down , would have so loved to see your little smiles while you were performing or even just see your faces light up while the older kids performed……I guess not meant to be …..

Well boys I hope you are warm , happy and well looked after ……

As always I shall see you both a little later under our big old African tree in dream land , can’t wait to give you both a huge cuddle……

Night , night pals , happy place dreams please ….

I miss and love you both more than you will ever know I guess….

Love you little men…

Dad xx