New Year Light Show...

Who needs fireworks when you have the Northern Lights? :-)) A perfect show for the first day (night :-) of the year.

After having a temperature of 38.8 yesterday and feeling exhausted and generally yucky, I woke up this morning and was delighted to discover I'd slept well, my temperature had returned to normal and the yucky feeling had gone!  Alan was also feeling better and full of smiles and looked forward to Esme spending time watching a film with him (which she did :-)

Waited a wee while and when I still felt ok at 10am I messaged Eleanor and Nikki to let them know our traditional family Ne'erday dinner was going ahead.  Yay!  Thankfully we were all organised on the 30th and all that was left to do was peel the potatoes and the carrots.

Ele, Kenny & Jen arrived just after 3.30pm with Andrew, Nikki and Esme arriving not long after.  

We started off with coffee and Christmas goodies then Andrew, Nikki and Esme had a dook in the pool.  Nikki, who is due on 28th January and has had an absolutely awful pregnancy and feels huge, enjoyed the feeling of weightlessness.  Andrew had to keep Esme in check as she has no fear of the water (she is an excellent swimmer for a six year old) and would somersault, dive, and do underwater acorbatics till the cows come home!

Planned to have dinner at 6pm and just like Christmas Day, we were virtually bang on with the timing.  A true Christmas miracle :-)  My homemade lentil and ham soup to start, local butcher's steak pies, creamy mash, carrots and Nikki's delicious broccoli, cauliflower bake went down well, then desserts of chocolate melting puddings, creme brûlée, mini chocolate eclairs and toffee cups.

After dinner while we all stretched out on sofas, David and Esme disappeared to the piano where D plays some songs for her, then she returned the compliment.  She wanted the ceiling lights above the piano on as her spotlights and pretended the long lamp that lights the music was her microphone.  Pics in extras of her performing her own composition the lyrics of which included "trying to find my way to where I'm meant to be.....trying to find my way....home".   Next generation Taylor swift in the making :D 

Nikki and Esme headed to bed at the same time, the rest of us recharged our glasses and Jen set up a quiz on Kahoot on the TV, which we played for  over two hours.  What a hoot!  One of the best laughs was setting up our nicknames for the game.  No matter what I typed in it kept allocating me random nicknames.  I finally settled on PeacefulRhino21!

By the time we went to bed D was very happy to have beaten Andrew in the quiz section on cars! :D