Gus

We left mum's before lunch to head over to Warrington, and drove on the new Manchester Airport bypass which opened a couple of weeks ago - it's amazing and the journey is now cut down to about 30 minutes.  It was really weird too as we completely lost our bearings on what is a relatively familiar journey.

We dropped our bags and Christmas presents off at Rachel's, and went to see Alan's dad for an hour - his mum was off out on a ladies Christmas lunch, but Alan will be going back round to spend the day with them tomorrow, while Rach and I head into Manchester with Violet.

When we got to Norma & Barry's, Gus was there - he's a rather big French Bulldog that belongs to our nephew and his girlfriend, and Barry was doggy sitting for the afternoon.  I've not seen him before, and he had a bit of a grump at me at first, but I soon won him over by chasing him round the garden and throwing his ball for him.  He's quite a character who doesn't sit still, and always has his tongue out, which is quite cute.

We stayed until 2.45pm and then left to pick Scarlett up from school, and from there we went to Ikea, so she had meatballs and chips, with a hot chocolate followed by a chocolate muffin!  I then went to pick up some 3D picture frames which I need for a creative afternoon with Kate (Woof City) in the new year.

By the time we got back, Rachel & Violet were already home, and we were closely followed by Scott.  We bought the girls early Christmas presents to give them tonight seeing as we won't be seeing them on Christmas day, and told them that their other presents have been sent to Father Christmas.  Fortunately, our gifts tonight went down very well and surprisingly were just what they wanted, I wonder how we managed that!