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

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions. The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?" This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them. Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone. That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of. Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died. And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was. His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...

The Imitation of Christ: Spiritual Formation Book 2

"This is my hope, my only consolation, to flee unto thee in every tribulation, to trust in thee, to call upon thee from my heart, and to wait patiently for thy consolation." The second of my four books for spiritual formation is The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. The introduction to my copy starts off by saying that 21st century readers may wonder why they are bothering, which hardly seems like a recommendation! I have to admit I finished it with a certain sense of relief, but there were some hidden gems along the way. It's rather like reading the book of Proverbs. There's no story or explanation of a theme, but there are astute observations, honest prayers, the occasional flash of humour, and quite a lot of repetition. Thomas à Kempis was a priest in an Augustinian monastery in the 1400s. Presumably his life conditions favoured the silence and solitude that he advocates for in The Imitation of Christ , but also gave him opp...

Pirate Party

Ahoy there, me hearties! All hands on deck, we have some partying to do! Arrrr! Now, hats on, and don't forget - no self-respecting pirate admits to having two working eyes. Eyepatches it is, mateys! (What scurvy dog cut the elastic too short? They should be thrown into Davy Jones' locker.) Hats ready for assembly. From Yellow Moon but the elastic really was too short. All of ye who can wield a pen, get drawing a treasure map. We wouldn't want to mislay our loot, would we now? Toby wrote his name backwards and Blogger uploaded this sideways, just to confuse you. Shiver me timbers! Where did those gems and spyglasses go? Get hunting, me hearties, and the last one back with the swag is a scurvy dog. Each pirate had to find these in the treasure hunt. Now, this is a strange parcel, methinks. Let's pass it round, and when the shanty stops, why, 'tis your turn to unwrap a layer. One of his real presents, act...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Search This Blog