xmas

my mum arrived after the girls were in bed last night, so there was still plenty of important present giving and cracker pulling to be done

these are the last few days to catch the christmas lights. here are some in the village where we go to church. it’s just white lights which is tasteful, and all the animal shapes move which is slightly eery.

here’s a nice game you can play over the festive period. it works on the principle that when families get together there are a lot of underlying ‘issues’ which need to be dealt with.

Rules of Play:

Read More »family xmas fun

here’s our christmas:


we went to church first thing:

Mr Party plans an explosion and Kevin wears his hat well

puddings and pie (extinguished) and kezia with fairy wings

a little wooden train

our family. me with tanktop on left.

the last and final day of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a happy christmas

here are some people having a very happy christmas

after lunch with friends (the ones who were there, not the ones who weren’t) we went to the Crib service at church. jane was one of the leaders and played a mean guitar.
After that Jane went off to our sister church to do a repeat of service whilst i took the girls to the chip shop ! The chip shop wasn’t open so i did what any father would do and let the kids play in a deep bubbly bath for half an hour until it was open. we went back later with the girls in their pyjamas.
After a chips and chocolate supper, we brought esther’s duvet down and snuggled down to watched Chicken Run on the telly.

yeah for families and christmas !

day twenty four of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s another wise man

here is the third and final wise man. it’s Alan who plays the Organ at church. he also works for a university which must make him very wise. and to prove the point he’s wearing a golden crown.

happy christmas everyone !

(click for big version)

well, i’ve opened my first christmas present and it was a good one. it’s from my grandma and is a pair of my grandfather’s old shoes. he never wore these shoes and one look will reveal why. they are white leather with a green and yellow trim, and a red tongue.
kezia said “look, daddy, christmas shoes” which is a nice concept. i look forward to dazzling people with them over the next few days.

day twenty three of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a pudding

here is my photo of a christmas pudding. it’s a satsuma. a festive fruit eaten here as a dessert:

crackers means crazy. all we really want from a cracker is the paper hat.
the bang, joke and toy are usually a dissapointment. i think crackers might be a peculiarly british thing. perhaps people will let me know.
jane sends some to france each year so a french family somewhere can enjoy the fun UK-style. it’s part of the EU’s crackers-for-foreigners campaign.
there is a competitive element to crackers of course. and we can all learn from this study.
here are our christmas crackers in a box. we can only dream of what might be in them. we’ll find out on thursday of course …

day twenty two of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a penguin (or maybe a duck)

and here are the pictures of a penguin by our christmas tree. the penguin has a ball bearing under it so it can mooth (a word i invented which is a combination of smooth and move) around in a non-penguin way.
you wouldn’t know to look at it which is why i mention it here.


ah – but now i discover the word mooth has already been used before

yesterday was the shortest day. which is great if you are short. but why do we call it the shortest day ? it’s because the 21st December is traditionally the coldest day of the year and, as we all know – heat expands, cold shrinks. doorways everwhere will have reduced in size favouring the smaller in stature.
here is santa in a moses basket. kezia believes that if you look after santa on the run up to christmas then he’ll look after you on christmas day.

day twenty one of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a stocking i think

here is esther and kezia wearing their christmas stockings. they are actually bags for christmas presents, but i think that’s about the same thing.
they are obviously not for wearing which makes wearing them all the more obvious (if you are a kid).

day twenty of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a donkey

here is today’s photo:

although the actual photo should be this one. if it hadn’t been for the advent challenge we may not have found this find !

people have a lovely time at christmas. here some jolly types had, wait for it, drawn a smiley face on a transparent bag of waste paper and written ‘mr snowman’ at the bottom ! brilliant. i hope it made the bin men smile as much as it did me.

day nineteen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s another wise man

here is my photo. it’s my company’s CEO’s mouth.
i was sitting next to him at our xmas lunch and he’s obviously a very wise man. i say that not especially because he might be reading this. but he might be.

christmas is all about shopping, chocolate and jesus.
the office cleaners have focussed on the chocolate element. here is a big box of chocolates they have given the office as a present to say thanks for all the mess we’ve left them to clean up over the last 12 months.