in the spirit

Started into the Christmas Eve (or "Réveillon") preparations first thing this morning. Annie, Daniel and I making sweets around the kitchen table with our coffee...it was lovely. We were filling dates and walnuts with coloured marzipan and rolling homemade truffles in icing sugar. Pierre arrived in from his last day at work (!) and we set off to Aix-en-Provence for him to go to the head office, hand in his car, his phone and all his worldly possessions! ha! When we drove off in my car, Pierre was feeling very weird.

Once more page turned straight after that as we went back to his flat to hand over the keys. We had a chatty man doing the checking and oh god, did we just want to get out of there! He finally signed off on the place and we handed over all the keys. That was us free!

Got back to Pierre's mum and dad's and immediately realised we needed bread for the evening meal. We walked up to the local boulangerie/patisserie and what a sight it was to behold - all the staff dressed in santa outfits, lots of rows of bûches de Noël set out beautifully before us, gateaux des rois by the dozen...wow!

Straight into the sparklystuff as soon as we got back to the house...along with more cooking and preparations.

Matthieu, Stephanie and Leon arrived and we sat down to have our dinner. The living room was laden with homemade chocolates, my Christmas cake, a vanilla and apricot bûche de Noël, biscuits, meringues etc. etc. I don't think Leon ate any of his dinner - there was far too much other good stuff on offer :)

We had anchoïade and crudités to start, wee ham rolls with cream cheese filling, then stuffed vegetables for main, with my Christmas pudding for afters! I don't think they knew what to make of it :)

Just after dinner there was a loud voice came from the bedroom..."ho, ho, ho" it seemed to say. Leon was a bit scared at first, but eventually made his way into the room to see a sea of presents covering the bed. The window was wide open and Santa had just disappeared. What a shame he didn't get to see him!

The French tradition, from what I can understand, seems to be that present-giving happens on Christmas Eve. Kids think that all their presents come from Santa, so they don't know who has bought what...it's all very different to the way we do it at home...waking up to find your stocking at the end of the bed filled with presents from Santa and then still having all your other presents under the tree from everyone else! Those are the ones you've been staring at for weeks, dying to open! No one in France sees presents under the tree until, at the earliest, Christmas Eve...and it's Santa who's left them there.

So, my presents "from Santa" that evening were an easel(!!!), a label maker :) and only a frigging iPAD AIR!!! I couldn't speak for about five minutes. So happy and so shocked! My bottle of whiskey for Pierre paled in comparison :)

What a day...we were all completely zonked by 1am when Matthieu, Stephanie and Leon left. To bed...

Merry Christmas everyone!

A few more pics here.