Christmas Visiting
We managed to fit 4 households in 4 different places into a week and a half this Christmas (ok, that includes our own, which makes it a little less impressive ;) ) - which meant we saw several people but none of them for quite long enough.
Started off with Christmas Eve, Christmas Day & Boxing Day by ourselves in Ipswich - mostly playing games, to be honest (and eating and drinking!). J got 4 or 5 PS3 games among his presents, and I'm currently obsessed with Battlefield 3. There was also enough food to feed the 500 (there is still turkey in the freezer, I must make soup soon), and a fair amount of wine too :)
Then a week of travelling about visiting family - starting off in Oxford with my parents, followed by a few hours with J's sister and family in Macclesfield, and then New Year in Blanchland with J's parents. Whilst in Oxford we also managed to fit in a trip to the new Egyptian Galleries at the Ashmolean, and I went & looked at some of the paintings in the museum too (including the room of the peeled lemons ...). And in Blanchland we set up the new computer that we & Jo & Chris had got John & Anne for Christmas - which now means they can do G+ hangouts too (their old PC was too slow to handle them) and so can see Jo & Chris's son more often than they can travel there :)
And now we've been back home for a couple of days and normality is beginning to reassert itself (the 7am start this morning was rather brutal), the cat has even asserted his superiority by jumping out at me from under the dining table this morning so I think he's forgiven us for the cattery ;)
(Tho Christmas is not over yet - I don't really understand why everyone seems to be taking their decorations down, it's not Epiphany yet!!)
Started off with Christmas Eve, Christmas Day & Boxing Day by ourselves in Ipswich - mostly playing games, to be honest (and eating and drinking!). J got 4 or 5 PS3 games among his presents, and I'm currently obsessed with Battlefield 3. There was also enough food to feed the 500 (there is still turkey in the freezer, I must make soup soon), and a fair amount of wine too :)
Then a week of travelling about visiting family - starting off in Oxford with my parents, followed by a few hours with J's sister and family in Macclesfield, and then New Year in Blanchland with J's parents. Whilst in Oxford we also managed to fit in a trip to the new Egyptian Galleries at the Ashmolean, and I went & looked at some of the paintings in the museum too (including the room of the peeled lemons ...). And in Blanchland we set up the new computer that we & Jo & Chris had got John & Anne for Christmas - which now means they can do G+ hangouts too (their old PC was too slow to handle them) and so can see Jo & Chris's son more often than they can travel there :)
And now we've been back home for a couple of days and normality is beginning to reassert itself (the 7am start this morning was rather brutal), the cat has even asserted his superiority by jumping out at me from under the dining table this morning so I think he's forgiven us for the cattery ;)
(Tho Christmas is not over yet - I don't really understand why everyone seems to be taking their decorations down, it's not Epiphany yet!!)