Oh My.....

It's over already? :-(

I hope you all had a great Christmas.
Thank goodness Lanky Boy and Chic Girl aren't small anymore and no longer wake up at 5.30 on Christmas morning eager to see what Father Christmas has put in their stockings. They rise at a far more civilised hour now and it's more likely that I am up before them!While we were all eagerly waiting for my parents to arrive, Himself and Lanky Boy tried heating the milk in the microwave for our coffee only to find it wouldn't work:-( Arrgghhh, don't these things pick their moments? So they had to heat the milk the 'old fashioned' way. After Christmas I did a little online searching and it seems the Magnatron has broken and it will cost about £150 to buy a new one for our Neff model - and that doesn't include fitting. Well good grief, I just know a new microwave will not cost anywhere near that amount. Seems it's far cheaper to buy a new one (but, made in China) than it is to fix the old (UK made) one. What a shame, but since the new one (from Tesco) was £39.99 - it just doesn't make sense to spend four times as much - especially since we only use it for heating milk, making porridge and starting off jacket potatoes.

Christmas Day is my Papa's birthday and this year was a special one, so he had Happy Birthday candles to blow out.

Himself cooks our Christmas dinner - roast goose, roasted vegetables, still crunchy sprouts (yum) and broccolli, two stuffings (which I made) and other bits and bobs. Everything was just cooked to perfection and we stuffed ourselves, much like the rest of the UK does!

Chocolates..... so many chocolates......

Reliving my youth with this triple CDsome excellent songs, but oooh, I didn't half listen to some rubbish too! Scarily enough I knew the words to almost everything.

Himself bought me just the camera I wanted but in a fabulous red colour. I've had great fun with it already.
These pretty fabrics folded to look like a tree came from P. Ack, I'm torn between wanting to open up the fabrics and keeping the tree - ooh the dilemma:
Karol-Ann sent me these lovely gel pens and a useful covered notebook last monthand also very kindly made me a cosmetic bag, which I am using as a swish camera case instead:
the camera, battery and memory cards all fit in it nicely and it's so much prettier than my old camera's case and padded too.
These came from Wah:
One of my gifts from The Chic Girl and The Whizz Kid was this book with exquisite illustrations:

So many gorgeous gifts, thank you to everyone, you are very kind.
When it was getting dark, we all donned boots, coats and gloves and gingerly set off down the icy footpath in front of our house to the field, where the plan was to light a whole load of sky Lanterns, however we decided it must have been a little too windy and probably too cold, as they were reluctant to catch fire properly, so we only lit three of them, before going back indoors: Sorry the picture is so rubbish - didn't put my new camera to the right setting - Oops! But you can just about make out The Whizz Kid in the inky blackness of the freezing countryside, him and Lanky boy having just launched the second lantern. Lanky boy is even further down the field. If you have good eyesight, you might just about see the dot of an orange glow of the first one to the left. It isn't it half dark in the country without any street lamps!