Santa's Been Dec 24th and 25th, 2007

We've had a great Christmas so far. Instead of leaving all the food for Christmas Day, we've already feasted on some. Yesterday, Christmas Eve, we finished up our last bits of wrapping, Jim disappeared upstairs to wrap pressies and make my card. We called on our neighbours Sandra and Pete. They are both crafters and the run up the Christmas for them is chaos, with every weekend having 2 craft fairs. We took Sandra a bottle of whisky as it had been her 60th birthday last Wednesday and a couple of presents for today. I had also ordered 2 books from Amazon for Sandra to give to Pete, so took them and managed to hand them to Sandra without Pete's knowledge. We chatted and laughed, I drank tea and Sandra, Pete and Jim drank beer, wine and whisky!! Sandra is very funny after a couple of drinks. She invited us up for Christmas morning breakfast! We struggled home in the dark, finished our preparations and finally retired to bed.

9.30 saw us awake, I got up and made tea, fed the cats, then took the tea back to bed! When the cats had finished breakfast, they joined us. What a wonderful way to start Christmas Day. At 11, we went down to Pete and Sandras' house and had a fabulous cooked breakfast. Yogurt and raspberries to start with to 'cleanse our pallate'! Jim said ours wasn't dirty! We retired to the lounge and drank tea and chatted. Came back up to ours several hours later and opened our presents. Fabulous. Mostly fun things between us, I had many warm socks as my feet freeze with wellington boots on. A superb rucksack, the bottom of which stores cameras and lenses, ideal for our trip to Australia, some chocolates of course, smellies from my son and daughter in law and some still to come from my daughter.

As we opened our presents, we threw the paper on the floor and the cats had a fabulous time chasing it around and going in and out of a large carrier bag! They had some 'treats' too, which they loved. A trip up to the veg patch was required to collect carrots, leeks (our first) and sprouting broccoli. It was absolutely freezing and poured with rain after that and for the rest of the day, suddenly getting dark and very gloomy. So much for our Christmas Day walk.

Now sitting with a g & t. Lovely. Rang my son Ben in Spain and he was still in bed after a heavy night! Spoke to Kat (daughter) who has a rowdy houseful, 17 for dinner. Madness! Son 1 Jason didn't answer phone so maybe they'll ring later.

An evening of food and tv in store I think. What a great day it's been so far.