January 2020 - #TBCSmiles

Goodbye to 2019 and Hello 2020! Happy New Year to everyone - I hope it brings you the things you wish upon yourself. It's the 15th already, although January always seems to last a lot longer than most months. No snow yet, which is disappointing me and means it's just cold and windy, so most of your photos, and ours, have been indoors the last few weeks.

Christmas is fun but hard work, the return to 'normality' is much harder, and the short days mean leaving the house in the dark and not arriving home until it's dark, which is demoralising at best and can seem to last forever.

As I said in a post about making mistakes the other day, we'd all be in bed far earlier and get up later if we hadn't ever invented the light bulb, so allow yourself some comfort. If you aren't going out and want to stay in your PJ's, do it. You need a few extra calories to keep going, to keep warm and fight off colds, so don't fret about the couple of pounds you put on at Christmas.

If you want to have a lazy weekend, go for it. Watch movies and play board games, finish off the Christmas crackers and pickles, and make time for yourself. I think you've probably earned it.

I hope everyone managed to create a million smiles over Christmas and New Year, and if you didn't capture any on camera, then hopefully it's because you were too busy smiling and enjoying the moment yourself.

Lots of people did manage to catch some corking smiles this month, and shared them to Instagram with the #TBCSmiles hashtag. Anyone can join in with #TBCSmiles, you don't have to have a fancy camera or a million followers, just use the hashtag on a photo with a smile! The bigger the better, but we love a coy grin or a chuckle too, Sometimes the smallest smiles are the hardest won.

Here are 9 of the biggest smiles shared this month, or just those particularly appealed to my 9yo, who is taking a turn as assistant editor. You can see all of the smiles by checking out the hashtag on Instagram.... and adults - we need more of you out from behind the camera next month!

These smiles were shared by the following Instagrammers:

SusanKMann / KatyKicker / TheMumDiaries

SuperBusyMum / Moolboots / CarlyMarkham1

NotMyYearOff / StoppingAtTwo / MumTurnedMom

We made our own smiles here too, we really did have an excellent Christmas and spent a lot of time with the big kids. All 3 uni kids and my partner's parents were able to stay over on Christmas Eve, and it made up completely for the Christmas 2018 disaster. We're all painfully aware that they're creating their own lives and we won't be able to rely on getting everyone together like this for much longer, but crikey did we enjoy it while we had it*...

*You might have to imagine a lot of it. Teenagers and young people are very picky about which photos we are allowed to share, even though I obviously think they look great in all of them.