Skip to main content

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!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Limestone Way - the end! (for now...)

Bonsall is a pretty little village just up the road from Cromford. It was the centre point for my final Limestone Way walk. First I walked one way, back towards Ible, then I walked the other way to Matlock. I started at the fountain and climbed up to a tree in which a mistle thrush was singing loudly (helpfully identified by the Merlin app). A few fields took me across to the hamlet of Slaley. Then there was a pleasant walk through the woods, which dropped steeply to my left down to the Via Gellia. At Dunsley Springs the stream went right over the edge.  I made my way down more gradually, and then was faced with the long climb up again to the point near Leys Farm where I was rejoining the Limestone Way. Tree down! Rejoining the Limestone Way Once I'd reached the top, it was a very pleasant walk across dry grassy fields. There were signs of old mining activity, which suddenly made the ground feel less solid under my feet - how many holes were hiding under the turf? Back at Bonsall, ...

Limestone Way: Grangemill and Ible

It was getting mistier and mistier. As I drove past Carsington Water, the world around grew dimmer, and when I parked near Brassington, the nearby trees were hazy shadows in the murk. I was glad I was wearing a red coat as I started off along Manystones Lane. At least I had some chance of being visible. Fortunately it was a short road section. I navigated my way across a series of small fields, from one dry stone wall to the next, and crossed the old railway line which is now the High Peak Trail. I could just imagine a steam train emerging out of the fog. The next fields were larger. It was as if the landscape was being sketched around me as I walked across it. A tree or an electricity pylon would appear as a few faint lines, increasing in detail when I got closer, and fading away behind. Up ahead, the land dropped into a huge hole - Longcliffe Quarries. I couldn't see much, but the noise from the machinery dominated the next section of the walk.  I skirted the edge of the quarry a...

Baby Language

For some reason baby equipment is an area in which American English differs markedly from British English. As well as learning how to care for a baby, we had to learn a whole new vocabulary! Fortunately we are now fluently bilingual, and I have compiled a handy US-UK baby dictionary for you. Diaper n. Nappy Mom says if you can read this change my diaper. The first time you change one of these you will be all thumbs and stick the little adhesive tabs to yourself, the baby and probably the changing mat before you get them where they ought to go. A few years later you will be able to lasso a running toddler and change them before they even know what's happened (yes, I have seen it done). You will also get through more diapers than you ever thought possible, creating scary amounts of expense and waste. Hence we are now mostly using: Cloth diaper n. Reusable nappy Cool baby. No longer those terry squares, the main drawback is that there are now so many types it can be qu...