12 photos of Christmas

It's time for some Christmas photos!  Not the best photos in the world, it has to be said, and remarkably lacking in all the other people we saw over the season.  We spent Christmas with Graham's family, getting very well cooked for by his sister, his parents, and his aunt and uncle.  My parents came to stay the day after we got home, and left the morning of New Year's Day.  A quick tidy-up and we were ready for our second annual New Year's Day party, catching up with friends from the village and from church.  But here's some photos of other things...

Our treat before Christmas was a visit to Lichfield's A Cathedral Illuminated.  Six projectors provided an awesome 20-minute light show on the west front of the cathedral, including giant rolling baubles and singing angels.

 Inside were dozens of decorated Christmas trees (I liked the one with teabags), a nativity and hundreds of paper angels.

Look at all those presents!  Toby especially was very excited for Christmas this year, and could hardly wait until everyone was up and ready to open presents.  This is his and Theo's collection.

OK, so we were all a little excited.

The highlight of my Christmas - straws!  The boys had been fighting over sharing one red twirly straw for weeks.  Now they have two each, and I don't have to remember whose turn it is any more.

Toby's space station, which was the subject of several letters to Santa.  It required more building than I expected, but at least it kept us awake after Christmas dinner.

Theo is all into his playdough, so he was pleased with some new moulding tools.

Party hats at Christmas dinner!  Toby had fallen over in the playground just beforehand and felt a bit funny, but he'd definitely recovered by the time we got to the pudding stage.

More presents: we all rather enjoyed Theo's new marble run.

And one of Toby's favourites was a kitchen science set.  Here's the classic vinegar-and-bicarb volcano.

And finally, a Christmas pie.  We didn't have leftovers, of course, but minced beef together with some onions, carrots and parsnips which didn't get eaten before Christmas made a delicious pie.  And I had to have some fun with the spare pastry!