Merry Christmas!

I thought that as the children got older, they were supposed to get less excited and wake up later on Christmas morning. Not in our household! Tom was awake at 4.30am (although he was kind enough to keep that to himself) and Annabel, having spent her childhood having to be woken up on Christmas morning, came bouncing on our bed at 6.30am. We made her go away and come back at 7.00am. Having opened the presents and breakfasted, we went to the Christmas morning service at church, marking 8 years to the day since we first went to a service there. Then we ventured to Chesterton for lunch with Peter's parents, always a lovely occasion.

This year we shared it with Peter's youngest sister Ally and Dave and their 4 boys (whom we hadn't seen since they moved out to Qatar in August) and Peter's brother Stephen, Dee and little Erin.

Erin spent the day in her new fairy dress and her big cousin Anni spent the entire day in her new leather jacket. I was actually surprised when she managed to take it off at bedtime. She enjoyed spending time with her little cousins. Can't believe how much little Harry has changed since he moved to Qatar, now alking around with his gorgeous blond locks.

...and here's Anni with her Granddad.

We spent the evening back home where we watched Peter's hilarious Michael Mackintyre dvd. It is so funny that my face and chest actually hurt from laughing. We even had to pause it at one stage to catch our breath. What a funny man!

I hope all of you had a Christmas that was merry and bright :)

Snow then slow

One of my (many) quirks is that I always aim to have my Christmas cards on my long distance friends' doormats on December 1st. By that date this year I had only just resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to have time to make them and would have to buy them instead. I have never been so last minute about Christmas. I hadn't even started my Christmas shopping (bar those for my brother's family in London) until Monday. I actually began to enjoy the horrified looks from supermarket checkout assistants, hairdressers etc. when the customary, "All ready for Christmas?" was met with, "Nope, not even started yet."
So yesterday Peter, Anni and I ventured into our native Manchester to complete the shopping. We were pleasantly surprised by the lack of traffic on the way in, coupled with the abundance of snow! This was Albert Square as seen from our car, it was picture postcard perfect. Furthermore, the shops weren't too crowded and we set off home at 4pm, really pleased that we had got it all done in time to miss the rush hour traffic. And then.....
We sat in traffic for a very long time. It took us 2 hours and 47 minutes to get home. Just the kind of thing that makes Peter's back flare up. Tomorrow I shall enjoy not shopping.

Hooray, hooray it's a holly holiday, tiki ta ta tum, tikki tikki ta tum, hi de hi die ho :)

It was YP Christmas party time again and this year we opted for fancy dress. I was amazed at how much effort everyone had put in and gutted that my Abba dress mysteriously vanished just before I needed it. (I think Tom and Anni were extremely relieved!) We had some wonderfully created Christmas trees, pirates and sparkly fairies...

Things and Oompa Lumpas leaping around...

..and we were even treated to a Horton family rendition of Dancing Queen. It was a good night, even if I did come away with a croaky voice from doing the Big Quiz of 2009.

Finally I can start to relax and enjoy Christmas. No more school for 2 weeks and Peter has two weeks off too. Better think about starting that Christmas shopping.....I'm not even joking...

Tis the season to be jolly

On Saturday night we had our house group's Christmas gathering along with lots of friends and neighbours. Altogether 47 of us shared food and the X Factor final before a jolly session of carolling round the piano. (Where would I be without my very own Bobby Crush?) One of my favourite parts of the evening was thanks to Alison (below), who brought along the flashcards for the 12 Days of Christmas which she uses with her reception class. Everyone got right into singing in arts, even Anni's schoolfriends, who weren't jumping up and down with glee at the first mention of singing carols.

We were even honoured with a visit from one of Santa's special elves. (I think this must be the cutest elf Santa has!)

We all had a brilliant evening, especially Josh, who was almost constantly surrounded by 7 lovely ladies. It's a hard life for some!

It was such a fab evening~ thanks to everyone who made it so. And Ione, I hope the pictures loaded this time!

Good company and stolen dresses

Music continued to be a theme in our house today. We had the pleasure of the company of the Hortons and Peter decided to introduce Daren to Gutar Hero. Now that was a sight to behold!

We were also treated to a few flute duets from Abi and Anni. Talkng of Anni, yesterday I took my Mum "up Hanley" to do her Christmas shopping. We left at 8am to beat the crowds and returned home 6 hours later. During this shopping trip I treated myself to a new grey knitted dress, which I wore last night ~ only to have it borrowed by Anni today! Cheek!

Fir enough

Hoorah for the first Saturday in December, the day when we always go to the farm shop and buy the Christmas tree. At 6ft 7" it's huge but only slighter taller than Tom!!!!

I have now learned to stand to one side and leave the tree dressing to the experts, Peter and Anni. They do such a great job.

Now I'm sitting back and enjoying the loveliness of the tree, which smells so scrummy! It's been a really long week, in which I have marked the books of every single pupil I teach and entered data until I've gone cross eyed, driven to Birmingham and back and danced my boots off. I'm enjoying chillaxing on the sofa while Peter snores away his busy week. Mmmmm....

Singalong-a-Abba

My "unternehmungslustige" friend Jane is soooooooooo organised. She books events well in advance, which is great because you get a long time to look forward to them. Back in July she booked us in for an Abba singalong event in Birmingham, with a live Abba tribute band. She also made three matching Abba dresses (2 of which are featured above) and got us matching handbags from Primark. Once my daughter had expressed her digust at the shortnesses of our dresses, we set off for Birmingham.

Much to our delight, we were given a goody bag, with SOS cards, money, money, money, flags to wave during Fernando, tooters to toot during Super Trouper and party poppers to pop to Thank You For The Music. We had been slightly worried that we might be the only people dressing up. We need not have been. We actually looked quite normal compared to most people there, as you can see from the Dancing Queen dance-off.

I'm having difficulty imagining Peter dressing up and boogieing away like the man on the end next to "Benny" on the piano! What a funny night it was! I did want to bring those giant Abba signs home with me though.

And so this is Christmas

We love Christmas in this household and so although it was not quite December, we decided to start bringing out some of the non tree Christmas decorations over the weekend. First of all came the jolly snowman quartet, made by my sil Gilly.

Next we took a trip to Homebase and spent some nectar points on festive foliage to adorn the stairs. But if we felt a little premature, we were soon comforted by the equally early advent of the Christmas inflatables across the road. I shall be posting more "deck the halls" type scenes as they appear. Annabel is eagerly awaiting the display around the corner, where not one blade of grass is left uncovered by a carpet of lights. It's all a bit jedward (a new adjective describing something which is so bad that it's good).