Happy Christmas to you!

Wishing everyone a very happy Christmas today, and I hope that it was a good day for you however you celebrated it.

We planned a timetable last night to get through the activities today. I was up early, had a run and was showered and ready to meet for the opening of presents at 9am. Goodness but Santa was very generous this year, I felt quite spoilt. Then Adam made breakfast, we had individual baked eggs with smoked salmon, a dusting of parmesan and topped with chives, it was delicious. Gavin went off to walk Xena while I got stuck into preparing our Christmas lunch.

The family photo was taken without much grumbling from the models. The space is not that large and as the boys have got bigger over the years I find it tricky to fit everyone in the frame with the background behind.

Christmas lunch is all about the timing, isn't it? We agree a time we wish to eat and then I work backwards from there to make sure everything is cooked and ready at the same time, which is the difficult part of making a roast dinner. We ate far too much today - roast lamb, roast turkey crown, roast potatoes, roasted carrots and parsnips, red cabbage, brussel sprouts with pancetta, chestnuts and marsala wine, stuffing balls, pigs in blankets, homemade cranberry sauce, ....it was a lot of food but it went down very well, accompanied by a delicious local English 'champagne' from Denbies. Then later it was my traditional trifle made with amaretti biscuits, raspberries, white chocolate and custard. We played silly games - I think it is called Heads Up where the identity of who you are is stuck on your forehead so you cannot see the name, and you have to ask questions which have a yes or no answer to work out the identity. It always has us in fits of laughter.

The clearing up did not take that long, now it is time to relax!