Merry Christmas!

Good Morning Blog World! Merry Christmas to you all, and to your families and loved ones!

We're busy here. Santa came and brought presents for J.  We opened our gifts from each other. Now D. is getting the Christmas food sorted out and I'm supposed to be getting dressed (hee hee).  The Crowd will arrive at around 12pm, so I suppose I should get on with it. There's Work to be Done - even on Christmas Morning!

Love to all!

xx

Help!

I wanted to add a nice Christmassy feel to my blog, by having a carol playing for my visitors.

But I can't find a gadget that will let me do this.

Can anyone explain how it is done, please?

It's Official!

Santa is in Australia! It's official, because I saw it just now on NORAD's Santa Tracker!

Right at this moment, he's in Alice Springs.  He's already been to Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.. he's on the way to Darwin in 2 minutes time.

It's Official - Santa's on his way! 

Ho, ho, ho... Merry Christmas!

Party!

Today was all about the Party! Each year, for about the last 5 or 6 years, J has had a few friends round in the run-up to Christmas, to enjoy themselves playing games and eating nice things.  We make it into a small party, with decorations, crackers and party table-ware, party gift-bags etc.  It's fun and we all enjoy it. 

D. had to work today, so there was just me & J.  However, in the past year/18 months, J has grown up soo much.  He was quite helpful today, doing jobs for me, so the place was (relatively) clean & tidy, the table was set and the food mostly ready by 3pm, when everyone was due.  This year there were only 3 friends here, as the other two he invited were visiting relatives, but they are his best friends and they all get on very well together.

Here are the four of them, posing for me at tea-time.

They had a great time, playing Twister before tea.

B. was the "Caller" at this point.

J. resting (excuse the pinkiness, it's the best I could do).

All in all, I think we had a good time.  They had pizza and nice bread rolls, with cold meat, cheese, salad etc, then a selection of nice little cakes & biscuits, with a great little chocolate fondue that we bought the other day, specially for the party. It was fun - I made the fondue with a mix of dark & milk chocolate, plus a little cream, then stood it on a big plate, with an assortment of dippy items - grapes, strawberries, tangerine segments, bits of mango, "zoo" biscuits and some great little almond shortbread curls that one of the mums made for us.  It was definitely a success - and strawberries dipped in chocolate are my new favourite!

Once they had eaten all they could, we had a "relaxing" game of pass-the-parcel - except that nothing is relaxing with a group of 11 & 12-year-olds!  Lots of daft fun, forfeits and jokes. 

Then we played "What Am I?", which involves someone sitting on the bean bag, with a hat on.  A piece of paper is stuck to the hat, which has the name of an object, person or animal. The person who's "it" has to ask questions, to try and work out who or what they are.  I made up a batch of paper labels this morning, with stuff like "squirrel", "aeroplane", "smelly sock", "toilet", "Sherlock the cat", "a dog's collar", etc etc.  Some were mundane and others were silly. This game is very popular with J and his friends. They beg to play it now!

Then they tried Charades, but they were tired and excited, so it didn't go so well. The Wii was the next thing they chose, which was much more successful.  B. and E. went home at 6:30, but G's mum sent a message to say she'd be over a bit late. She knows I don't mind, so J. and G. carried on playing various Wii games, while D arrived and had a coffee with me.  It was just after 8pm when they went home. J was pretty much ready to crawl into his bed by then (I wasn't far off it myself)!

It was a good day and I have had fun. They're a great bunch of children and it's so nice that they're still friends. J. has a group of friends, who are pretty evenly split between boys and girls. I'm happy for it to stay that way (though I daresay there will be times when they are less close, as they grow and realise they are boys or girls!). 

I was amazed today, to see how tall they have all become over the last year. They have all grown a good foot in height! They were so long and leggy, playing Twister!  They're all going to be taller than me very soon (in fact, G and E may be already).

It's time I found Sherlock and persuaded him that it's bed time... I need my pillow!

G'night all!  Christmas Eve tomorrow (or now if you're Amy and co!).

Yaffle

Well, today we did get one of our parcel deliveries - the party presents arrived in a nice big box (much bigger than needed, but that was fun)!  Also a small present arrived for J. and two t-shirts that I forgot I had ordered for my niece's husband and my other niece's b.f.  Now we only need J's "Dad present" and all is set!

Walked to post office in the village just before lunch.  The day was much milder than yesterday and the snow showed signs of melting.  We wore walking boots anyway, as it was very slippy underfoot. I didn't want another fall-induced injury thanks! Posted our Important Letters and bought some mistletoe for over the fireplace.

On our return I started to make some sandwiches for lunch, but was very distracted by this:

This is Mrs Yaffle, who dropped into our garden for a snack!

She is a Green Woodpecker - the largest of the British Woodpeckers.  She must have been very hungry, as she dug a hole in the lawn - probably after insects or perhaps ants. 

The photos are not very good, as my camera is only a snapshot type.  I was so lucky to get any pictures at all really. I spent 20 minutes standing at my open bedroom window, with the camera poised, taking as many shots as I could. I had to be patient, as she flew off and came back several times, when the garden birds decided they had seen me moving. 

Green Woodpeckers are not that unusual in countryside gardens, but they are a bit rare in gardens that are in a more built-up area, like ours.  She must have flown over from one of the small copses or woods round the edge of the village. She certainly was lovely and I felt very privileged to see her! 

This is a pair of Goldfinches, who dropped in to eat seeds off the garden shrubs.  My patient waiting today certainly paid off. I saw about 12 different types of birds in the garden during that 20 minutes. They were all getting on with eating as much as possible. It was a lovely thing to see them all.

We do get a few unusual birds in the garden from time to time.  There have been a few Greater Spotted Woodpeckers, plenty of fnches etc, also a Treecreeper, going round our willow tree, looking for insects.  At our last house we had (as occasional visitors) Kestrels, Skylarks, Willow Tits, Grey Wagtails (which are, in fact, largely yellow!), Swallows, Swifts and House Martins, Fieldfares, Waxwings and also something we think was a Harrier of some kind, or perhaps a Red Kite.  Our garden backed onto open fields, which led down to the river, so we had a lovely view and very interesting birdlife. Where we are now is more urban, even though it's a village, so the birds are mainly "garden birds", but now and then we get the odd bonus visitor (like the heron who ate all our goldfish!).

While we had our lunch, I put the first part of "The Box of Delights" in the video player.  It is really starting to feel like Christmas Time!