Sammy has been intrigued by ice this week. The weekend before Christmas we had booked to go ice skating at a temporary rink at Cadbury Garden Centre. Unfortunately it tipped with rain and as they allowed us to postpone our booking, we changed the date and prayed for sunshine on Sunday 6th January! Fast forward to the 6th and we got our sunny day. In fact it was so mild, my husband skated in just a polo shirt!

We tried to explain that the ice had to melt, as our session finished, as it was the last day of the rink being open. He didn't really understand so we played a game at home to learn how ice melts. I set several of his favourite dinosaur toys in a bowl of water in the freezer. Then we let it defrost and chipped away at it with a wooden spatula! The defrost button on the microwaved helped a little and we had a good question and answer session!

I would definitely recommend the ice skating as a Christmas activity for next year. Poor Ollie couldn't go on as you had to be 2 and over but was happy to watch from the side as long as one of us was holding him. He found the glass a curious barrier!

Here are some of my favourite snaps we took. I warn you there are loads!

hank you cards have been a long standing tradition in our family. My Mum always insisted we actually write thank you cards and it's a manner I am instilling in the boys. You don't have to make the children write a lot but enough to show someone their effort was appreciated. I love receiving them (my friends send cards for nice weekends and sometimes just for nothing at all) and Sammy was so proud to colour in the stamp area. I didn't have the heart to tell him it would be covered up when I went to the Post Office!

I found some great free printable designs like these ones from Today's Creative Blog which are perfect for little ones.

Download it here.

For an older child try this sweet style from Two Pooch Paperie. You can download it here.

For a modern style try this from She's Kind of Crafty, download the black and green version here, the red and green here and the mint and pink here.

Grown ups will love this traditional design from Sweet Muffin Suite, download it here.

But in the end I decided to use one of my Christmas presents! Ladybird Book Cover postcards. I found one which either suited the recipient or the present!

Granny gave them a playmobil airport (and masses of other things) so The Story of Flight postcard was perfect. My in laws bought an entire pirate playmobil set (both sets of grandparents did very well on eBay this year) so it was a pirates life for them! The African Mammals tied in brilliantly with our Safari Christmas theme for my Auntie.

I love photo cards too. I would use Photobox, Truprint, BonusPrint or Snapfish for affordable printed photo cards. Boots are offering 20% off at the moment too!

Did you get the children to write thank yous this year? I've seen some pictures of lovely photo cards on Twitter!

Last year I found this great wall chart and we measured every member of the family and all the friends we saw over Christmas.

I have got it ready for this year, and am going to bring it our every year to see how my boys are growing!

Last year Sammy was as tall as a newborn elephant! He is so tall for his age, but with me being the shortest in my family at 5' 9" he was never going to be petite!

Ollie was a red fox! Cute!

And I was the height of an average British Man! Great!

How tall are you and I will let you know where you feature on the chart!

Do you play games at Christmas? I remember as a child we never watched an television on Christmas day it was just endless games! My poor Mum must have been exhausted! She always makes up a Famous Faces Quiz and this year I am going to do a children's version with faces of the famous characters!