Merry Christmas...

Christmas Day!  It's a bit strange going to a different house for Christmas because at home I know the whole routine of the day but being somewhere else you're never quite sure what will come next.  In the morning we went to the service at Scapegoat Hill Baptist Church just up the road from the house (although we still took the car).  It was a nice Christmas morning service with lots of carols and little talk.  Then it was straight back to the house to get the dinner ready.  With  7 of us already there we were just waiting for the other 4 to arrive - Ian, Sheena, Elliot and Lyndon.  Laraine couldn't remember what time she had told them to come so we were working on 1pm but by half past we rang them and they were working on 2pm so we delayed putting on the gravy!

Sally phoned at about 5pm while we were still finishing off dinner with cheese and crackers and they had opened presents, eaten dinner and were both sitting in their new pajamas already.  The rest of our day was then spent playing lots of silly games.  The highlights of the games were that I am now the champion of the 'find the dolly mixture' game, Robert is the champion of the 'throw the card into the pudding bowl' game and Laraine is the champion of the 'move the dried peas from the plate to the cup using only a straw' game.

We had our second Christmas Day in Stockton on the 27th when Rob and Sally arrived from their hotel in the lakes.  Again it was a lovely turkey dinner but this time with more presents in the afternoon as we had only taken a couple over to Huddersfield for the three of us so this was the main present opening Christmas for us.  I was given the task of distributing the presents from under the tree and managed to spoil the surprise for Mum's present by handing her the book for 'Learn to Play the Cornet' before she had opened the actual present of the Cornet.  Still I don't think she minded and she got straight into practising, having never had much practice at playing a brass instrument I can't say that the first attempt sounded very musical but more like a strangled cat but I know she will become an expert in no time! 

Happy Christmas Eve

This year for a change we spent Christmas away from Stockton and had a lovely couple of days over in Huddersfield with Robert, Laraine, Oliver and Alicia.  Christmas Eve we went out for dinner at The Hinchliffe in Mytholmroyd, we had pre ordered the starters and main so we spent part of the afternoon trying to remember what everyone had ordered while watching The Snowman on TV.

Dinner was great, the starters arrived almost as soon as we had sat down and while my chicken liver pate was lovely I was annoyed that I had let myself get put off by the sound of the Cream of Tomato soup - I thought that it sounded a bit too much like it might come from a Heinz tin.  When it arrived for Oliver it obviously wasn't as I had expected and it looked so good.

I decided to go for a main course of Fish and Chips to avoid having anything too similar to the turkey that I imagined I would be eating for the next week and that was also fantastic.  A huge piece of fish and big fat chunky chips.  I still found a little bit of room for the Apple and Sultana Crumble and the Orange Creme that Alicia and I were nearly fighting over but luckily a second one arrived just in time. 

 

Pictures of the Year

I don't normally look at the Telegraph website, I usually end up sticking with the BBC news to find out what's happening in the world even though I find the whole set up of the site very annoying (but that's another story). Tonight I happened to link through to a story in the Telegraph and saw a link for these picures of 2008. I think they are amazing, and I'm also shocked at some of the things that are depicted here that I don't recall happening, like this volcano erupting in Chile -


Now why is it that I know from the news all the ins and outs of the divorce settlements of McCartney/Mills and Madonna/Ritchie and the weekly details of the X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing contestants but I didn't know about some of these disasters?

And the best guess is...

....A seal on a snowball.

Well that's my guess anyway. I got to Monday and realised that I hadn't opened my advent calendar all weekend so I had three to open. Two of them followed the same general theme as the others with pictures relating to the nativity (with the odd exception of a Christmas Tree and a Holly wreath) but Saturday's was just strange. I couldn't decide what it is so my best guess is a seal on a snowball. Any other ideas?

Thanks Lovey

I don't think I've ever been called Lovey as many times as I was this morning. I took my car in for it's annual service and the guy on the Service Desk must have said it to me twice in every sentence and that was just when I dropped the car off. I went back to pick the car up and it carried on. How he managed to still get it into a sentence while telling me about his sick St Bernard that he'd had to stay up with all night, still puzzles me. Luckily I only take the car in once a year so I think I've had my fill of being called Lovey to carry me through to next December now.

New Job!

I had half a day in my new job this morning having a handover with the girl that is leaving. Bit of a shame to put annual leave in from one job just to go in and work at another but at least we finished by lunch time so I still had the afternoon to myself.

Thankfully the morning hasn't put me off working there! I was a bit worried that it might scare me so much that I would go back to my current job and beg to stay. That hasn't happened though so I can carry on my winding down of work and look forward to Christmas. My last day in work will be Christmas Eve and then I have holiday until I start with Yorkshire Housing on 5th January. It's going to be quite a strange start in January as the 2 permanent people that work in the HR Department now both leave before Christmas so I'll arrive in January with a new HR Manager, another new HR Adviser in Bradford and a vacant position to fill. Should be a challenge!

Let it Snow...and everything stops

I got up on Tuesday morning to find about an inch of snow had fallen overnight which I wasn't very excited about as I know many other people would have been. As Ruth and I have been walking into work now then she arrived ready to walk in as usual, it hadn't crossed our minds not to just because a little snow had fallen. So after a quick change of shoes after Ruth had skidded her way to my front door we set off on our usual route, but we didn't get very far. We were both slipping and sliding our way along the road so before we'd even made it to the next bus stop we had decided that it was better to spend the money on the bus than risk breaking numerous bones by continuing with the walk.

Wednesday was much better, the ground was just very frosty so we made it all the way to work with just one slip of the feet by me. Today was another matter though, when I got up this morning a few more inches of snow had fallen and it was still snowing. I needed to be at the other office in town today for a 9am meeting so I had already decided that I would get the bus in setting off a little earlier than usual. Off I went at 7.45am and was on the bus 5 mins later, it then took 2 hours for the bus to do it's usualy 30 min journey. It seems that when it snows here people get so surprised that everything either comes to a stand still or stops completely! There were numerous times that I wondered whether it would be better to get off the bus and walk but each time the bus would move a little further and as I'd paid for my ticket I wanted to get value for money! Suffice to say that arriving at the office at 9.45am meant that I'd missed my meeting so I just stayed for a cup of tea and a chat with people instead!

As it is officially winter now that it has snowed, I decided that this evening was a good time to put my Christmas tree up, so here it is.