just another morning here

Steve and I say on the way home every year how grateful we are to have family on both sides where we feel totally at home and comfortable, and where we enjoy everyone’s company, look forward to getting together and always have a lovely time. It was yet another year like that – again we had a fabulous time with my side of the family, between games, food, a walk around the village, gift exchange, and general chatting. Last year we didn’t quite get everyone out for a walk but this year we did (I’m sure having Meg the dog with us helped!), so took a pic in the same place – and it was a first take wonder!

Everyone liked their presents, and the girls did well for their birthdays too, although I’m not sure I should thank Mark & Heidi for the Olly Murs CD we had to endure on the way home

It was super-exciting to be able to add not one but TWO extra pieces of paper into the hat for our Not-so-secret-Santa for next year since my sister is expecting twins in the summer. They have now been named Bobbin and Charlie (by Abbie – not quite sure what she was thinking?!!?!).

We even ended up talking about going on holiday in a big house together again … who knows if/when that will happen but it is just lovely that everyone would want to – we are very blessed

When we got home we had to blow up Josiah’s inflatable dalek, and he ended up ‘sleeping with the enemy’ all night long

Boxing day started in a very lazy fashion; Steve and I watched a film in bed. The children decided, for once in their lives, to get up and ready on time and in a shock event, they were ready before us! We went over to Steve’s parents’ house for the day which was lovely – we exchanged gifts before a fabulous buffet lunch.

After lunch we played games and fell asleep in front of Elf … then picked at the food again before watching the Borrowers in the evening. Lovely and relaxed

Today we had always planned to go sales shopping – something we NEVER normally do, but I confess now, I had planned to buy presents for my family (who we are seeing tomorrow) after Christmas. Well – you get more for your money! We’d already bought a few, but found the last few successfully today. We should have our Christmas celebrations later on every year!

The children spent a bit of their Christmas money too, so they were very happy – Josiah bought the last Harry Potter film on DVD so we came home and watched that, closely followed by Senna (one of Steve’s presents). Looking forward to going over to friends’ tonight … and Steve’s off for the whole week between Christmas and New Year, so it does feel as though the holiday is stretching out nicely

Josiah went to stay at the school boarding house for the past couple of days – his Christmas treat! We spotted him at services yesterday but he hardly even looks at us really, we have to try and thump him as he processes by. He did deign to talk to us a bit when we went across to the boarding house for a buffet after the big Christmas Eve service yesterday but I think that was only because we had a present for him! It’s a bit strange on Christmas Day without him in the morning but he’s very happy being ‘in the zone’ as a chorister, and it means we don’t have to rush out of bed … we’re not committed enough to make it to the Cathedral for the first service of the day!
We opened stockings with the girls this morning, then got ready and arrived at the Cathedral in time for Mattins – met Steve’s parents there too. After the service we bundled across to the school with around 20 other chorister families for drinks and then Christmas dinner, which was fantastic.

Last time we did this it was Josiah’s first year and we felt a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing but this year we really enjoyed it. Well, the girls moaned about having to go back to evensong after lunch but they had to lump it!

Once home Josiah opened a couple of presents, the cat opened hers (!!), and we all loafed around enjoying presents, eating rubbish food, then eventually watching Dr Who.

We tried to get a family photo too, almost got a decent one but decided that the silly one was probably the best!

Anyway. The nice thing about having spent the day in the Cathedral is that we still have two family get-togethers to go, so we still have lots of festivities ahead of us

Thankfully schools here had all finished on Friday, so this weekend we only (ha!) had all the Christmas performances by the extra groups. It’s always a manic weekend but lots of fun.

All credit to Josiah, who had the busiest day of all of us. He was out of the house around 8.40am for a choir rehearsal 9-10.30. He then had a service to sing from 11am-12.15pm. Then came a brief break while we collected the girls from Orchestra, dropped Abbie to a friend’s, and made it into town with half an hour to grab MacDonalds before he played violin with the Suzuki Group for the best part of three hours. I walked him back to the Cathedral at 4.45pm where he had a rehearsal from 5-6pm before tea in the boarding house and then the Cathedral Choir’s Christmas concert from 7.30-9.30pm. The choristers were given £5 each for having sung the extra service in the morning so he dashed off to buy sweets in each break from the violin playing and enjoyed sharing them during the busking. We’ve been doing this busking each Christmas for five years now, and it’s quite interesting to see how much Josiah has grown up since we started! And Anna too … we had to drag her away from her friends at the end, as they’d started improvising around various pop songs and would happily have carried on for hours I think, but the Harlequins Centre had had enough of them by then

The first pic is from 2007 and the second one from this year. I did have photos of 2008, 2009, and 2010 too, but thought you’d probably get bored by all of those

The Choir’s concert was excellent too, we really enjoyed it. Josiah is definitely more confident now and it’s lovely to watch. He’s signed up for an extra choir jaunt to support a choir in North Devon this week, so that shows how much he enjoys the choir aspect of his life – it’s VERY hard work but it is fun too.

Yesterday we had the ECO Christmas concert – very enjoyable as usual and we particularly enjoyed having the Ockment Valley Handbells performing both separately and with the orchestra – I wish I had video-ed some of it but I only have photos I’m afraid. Again fun to see the pictures from Christmas concerts in years gone by and compare them to this year’s!

Again the first pic is Anna’s first year at ECO in 2007, and the cello section this year, with Anna as the new section principal. 2008 was Abbie’s year since the concert was actually on her birthday, 2009 is best forgotten because of the junk band we shared with (ow), and 2010 is memorable for having NO photos probably because I was more worried about getting there safely in the snow than remembering the camera!

We now have a week off school, where I’m trying to be as productive as possible so that we can have a proper break from Christmas Eve onwards. Time to stop blogging, have lunch, and get on with some school-work …