Up The Farway Tree

Christmas!!

I have had a lovely Christmas and now relaxing and enjoying some calm, before the New Year festivities!   We arrived at mum and dads last Friday so had the whole of Christmas Eve here.   My friends from school (and their husbands) all came over in the afternoon, as per tradition, and we had a lovely couple of hours catching up.  We then went to the Christmas vigil Mass and afterwards Sarah joined us all for a Christmas movie.  Mum then packed me off to bed so that Santa could visit!

Seb gets into the festive spirit..  (sort of!)

Christmas Eve - before Santa had even been with his presents!

My sleigh full of wee Christmas toys!

Claire made this paper chain when she was in primary one - so that was about 30 years ago!  From top to bottom - Claire, me and Fran.  Note that we get progressively more dishevelled :-)

Stars that me, Claire and Fran all made when in Primary 1.  Mine is the one at the front where the silver paper is not straight and the white is showing through, Claire's is the perfect one in the middle and Fran's is the one using tinfoil mashed round.  

I actually slept well this year (must have been tired) and woke at 6.45am.  Andrew wouldn't let me get my stocking from outside the bedroom until 7.15am and it was a long wait....!    We had a great time opening all our gifts and I must have been a VERY good girl this year because I had lots of fab presents.   Andrew had got me a kindle and a Fossil watch that I had been looking at (total surprise) amongst other very Jac presents (including a giant panda to wipe my windscreen with haha!)   Mum and dad gave me loads of fantastic clothes - mum always knows exactly what to get!  There were a couple of really cute dresses - one red and another black with chiffon sleeves and lots of lovely tops.   My favourite was a black dress with tiny red dogs on it - totally love it!!  Dad played a large role in the purchasing of  a giant rabbit door stop.  He is about 2ft tall and I have called him Harvey :-)

Dad quite liked his new hat...

Sarah came to visit with her fab gifts!

Andrew was really pleased with his electric guitar!

Seb with his santa hat and beard that my secret santa at work gave me (along with my present!)

Christmas table set

Centre piece made my Aunty Rose!

Crackers made my moi!

Uncle Hugh

Dad - hobbling around as he had put his back out

Mum preparing dinner

On Boxing Day we headed down to Anne and Johns for Christmas round two :-)   We also managed to catch up with Peter and David (friends of Andrews from school) who were home for Christmas and also with Anna, Jamie and their new baby Emily!  We had a lovely relaxing time and it's great to see everyone around Christmas.

Anne

Ross

John (trying to look cool...)

Andrew's gran - rocking out on the guitar ;-)

So it has been a lovely Christmas and lots of time has been spent with family and friends!  I am now looking forward to the New Year and some more celebrations over the coming days!!