Christmas 2010

Christmas is once again upon us.

Christmas eve was a flurry of wrapping presents, visiting neighbours, cooking pheasant, and christmas traditions of stories and Polar Express.

Christmas day was a day of presents, laughing at the dog helping us unwrap presents, eating, family, relaxing, eating, coffee, walking, snow, movies; and remembering that above all the reason we celebrate Christmas is because Jesus basically was born so that He could die. And die for us to have freedom. Pretty awesome reason to be celebrating if you ask me.

Merry christmas to all, to family and friends near and far - wish I could be with every one of you!

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree

In Stratford with mom and Dylan before Christmas

Winter icicles

Christmas Eve walk with Dylan

Christmas Eve walk

Skye

Christmas Day tea

Opening presents

Christmas dinner - Turkey, Gammon, Duck, and all the other bits and pieces!

Christmas day walk

New Year's Day walk in the Clent Hills

To the far right of this pic you can see how icy the path was

The above are a few pics of when we went walking in the Clent Hills on New Year's day. It was a great day out. We took puppydog with us, who was such a brilliant little star. There were lots of people and dogs around, but I let her off the lead and she was as good as gold. She made me feel so proud of her!

The Clent Hills are really beautiful. The day was made better by the fact that there was blue sky and sunshine. Yes, it was a weak, winter sunshine, and it was freezing cold (I think it was about -1), but it was good. Oh, and did I mention the treacherous iced paths and hills we had to face? Yep that's right. The paths and hills were completely, dangerously iced over. There was also snow everywhere. It was so beautiful though. And fun, when we weren't falling over or negotiating inches of ice and compacted snow!

We tried sticking to a map and directions, which didn't go too well at first. We ended up doubling back on ourselves a bit, until we eventually got onto the right path. We finished the walk by walking through a woodland (Skye was in her element!) and we were on our own so it was peaceful and quiet, and then we crossed this bridge and began a fairly steep ascent to the top of the woodland ridge.

When we reached the top of the ridge there was a family who wanted to say to Skye, so she put on her best behaviour and happily obliged them.

We then headed back to the car on this really, really icy path; and once back at the car had hot chocolate and laughed at people trying not to fall over (it's quite entertaining if you're not the one falling!), and Skye put her head on my lap and slept the whole way home.

Good day :-)

Christmas!

Today is christmas day, yet again! Where has this year gone?!

Woke up this morning (as you usually do in the mornings haha) and opened presents. Skye helped us by ripping up the paper and ripping the paper of presents. She loved it.

Then we went to church, and it was a pretty boring service and all the youth were sitting texting on their phones haha. The highlight of the service was when all the little kids got to go up on the stage and show off their presents, and one of the boys from youth (about 16) went up to the front for a joke, and he stood there the whole time (towering above the little kids!), and at the end he put his hand up and said that he got Michael Jackson socks!! hahahahaha!!!! All of the youth were all cracking up! It was hilarious!!

The Breens came over for christmas lunch (we had turkey, gammon, and duck, and all the other things you have); and we all made a lot of noise and ate too much food and sat and watched movies. After lunch Uncle Rob, Sean, Shan, Dylan and I took Skye for a long walk in the fields. It was fun, but cold. The snow we had yesterday didn't stick around so we didn't really have our white christmas!! :-( But we have patches of snow and ice all of the place, so I guess we had a bit of white.

We then came back from the walk and sat and watched Fawlty Towers haha.

The pup lay stretched out in front of the fire, content. It's been an exciting day of opening presents, saying hi to people, and walking. She is definitely a happy pup.

I'm proud of her. Feel like a proud mama. She has been so well behaved today. Hasn't jumped up at people or made a nuisance of herself :-)

I think I'm gonna go now as we're gonna have desert. Eat more food. Get fatter. You know how it goes. :-)