26th December photo - Boxing day

Today my sister's family came up for the day and Peter very kindly agreed to be my POTD as I had not been able to go out and take the photo that I had got planned in my head.

Thanks for coming to my rescue again peter!

25th December - Christmas Day

Merry Christmas to you all. I hope you have had an enjoyable day.

Our day has been very quiet - for the first time ever we did not leave the house! The children came into our room at a very reasonable 07.30 and Santa had visited them in the night and left them stockings - so they must have been very good this year! Still in our night wear we headed downstairs and opened the presents under the tree.

Steven with a new Yankee Candle - Orchard Pear this one. You can see he is impressed with my choice of gifts - nothing altruistic here!

Eleanor loved her Ingrid Michaelson concert poster - she is such a huge fan of hers.

Liam with some music - dad chooses this for him as I have no idea what he is into any more - but he and dad share a love of music.
Jess with her IPOD nano - it had to be pink!

I may not have found the perfect red toadstool this year - but they found me the perfect moneybox.

Dad and Eleanor sharing one of her many new books.

Snuggle up on the sofa time.

My POTD will be one of the following photos - my favourite gifts or us all around the dinner table.

24th December photo - Christmas Eve

A nice lazy day today - there was a bit of a role reversal going on though - the children were all working and Steven & I were the only ones with a day off. Eleanor was studying, Ross was sleeping after his night shift last night and Liam & Jess were both at work. Liam kindly got someone to take his photo for me wearing his red Christmas apron at work, because I have a fab layout in mind using the beautifully decorated paper bags that Starbucks have been using over Christmas as a background paper! How can I drag a 6' 2" tall lad kicking & screaming to the barbers - he refuses to have his hair cut!

When they had all finished work, we had a nice Chinese takeaway, opened a bottle of Bucks Fizz and watched the Christmasy DVD - The Holiday with Cameron Diaz & Kate Winslet - which got us all in the mood for tomorrow.

I took these photos of some of our Christmas cards in case, I did not want to use the ones of us in my album.

23rd December photo - work has to continue for some!

Poor old Eleanor is under pressure - she has to hand in her 70,000 word PhD thesis after Christmas and she is not ready yet! She finished her actual lab research at the end of the summer and has been writing up since then - but it is going slowly as she is a bit of a perfectionist.

So she has bought home all her work and has taken over the study with her papers and books and is hard at work all day and quite often into the night! She says she will takes a few hours off on Christmas Day! So I thought all her hard work deserves to be commemorated in my album.

22nd December photo - Maternity Carol Concert

Last night I attended the Maternity Hospital Carol Concert - the midwives choir sang beautifully. This first photo is my photo of the day.

It was not just the midwives singing - there is also a Male voice choir. Male & female voices joining together is lovely to hear.

This concert has become an annual tradition and is very well attended. It is held in the Maternity reception, so often visitors passing through to visit their relatives and friends in hospital stop and join in with the carols.

21st December photo - winter solstice

Today, the 21st December 2009, marks the Winter Solstice - the start of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere and the shortest day of the year. According to the National Geographic its all due to the Earth's tilt, which ensures that the shortest day of every year falls around 21st December.

These photos were taken at 16.10 hrs this afternoon and 5 minutes later the sun had set and the red of the setting sun had disappeared. We could see that it was happening fast - so I took the roof photo from out of the bathroom window, then jumped in the car and took the one with branches in - just by the school grounds. This second photo will be my POTD.

A few solstice facts from the national Geographic web site - I have learnt something new here today!

Solstice in Space: Astronomy of the First Day of Winter

During the winter solstice the sun hugs closer to the horizon than at any other time during the year, yielding the least amount of daylight annually. On the bright side, the day after the winter solstice marks the beginning of lengthening days leading up to the summer solstice.

"Solstice" is derived from the Latin phrase for "sun stands still."

That's because—after months of growing shorter and lower since the summer solstice—the sun's arc through the sky appears to stabilize, with the sun seeming to rise and set in the same two places for several days. Then the arc begins growing longer and higher in the sky, reaching its peak at the summer solstice.

The solstices occur twice a year (around December 21 and June 21), because Earth is tilted by an average of 23.5 degrees as it orbits the sun—the same phenomenon that drives the seasons.

During the warmer half of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, the North Pole is tilted toward the sun. The northern winter solstice occurs when the "top" half of Earth is tilted away from the sun at its most extreme angle of the year.

Being the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice is essentially the year's darkest day, but it's not the coldest.

Because the oceans are slow to heat and cool, in December they still retain some warmth from summer, delaying the coldest of winter days for another month and a half. Similarly, summer doesn't hit its heat peak until August, a month or two after the summer solstice.

20th December photo - family get together

This afternoon we had our first Christmas family get together as Steven's Auntie's house. They have a lovely big house which is always festive, full of lots of children and plenty of gorgeous food served.

This get together has become an annual tradition now on the last Sunday before Christmas and it is lovely to meet up with all Steven's side of the family.

Crikey how do I choose just one photo again?