29th December photo - categorically speaking

Today we played another of Jessica's favourite games - Categorically Speaking. Steven insisted that we keep the letter 'Y' in one of the rounds - much to our protest - then he fumed cause he could not think of any words beginning with 'Y' for alcoholic drinks, Disney characters, things in the sky and symbols found on maps!

He is a very naughty boy - because when I ran off to fetch my camera - he thought it would be funny to rearrange the letters to spell a rude word - hoping that I would not notice and post it on my blog for the whole world to see! Men!

28th December photo - Lou's wedding

A friend got married today at Shrewsbury Castle - she looked absolutely gorgeous and I like this photo best - but it is in portrait mode so won't go in my album, so this second one is the actual one I will print out.

The proposal and wedding were so romantic - Scott proposed her out of the blue - she had given up hope of him ever asking her! Both her son's are going to serve abroad in January - so in just 6 weeks she had booked and arranged her wedding and it went off without a hitch.

Shrewsbury Castle is such a lovely setting for a wedding. It is now a military Museum - so it was quite fitting, given that both her son serve in the British Army. Lou with her Father & Sons'.

The castle looked lovely today and the rain kept off for her.

It was nice to be with friends - Judith, Flunky & Gael

27th December photo - lovely choccie bics!

Oh dear - we have all eaten far too many of these gorgeous chocolate biscuits. These are our favourite ones.
I think a very long walk tomorrow is called for!

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.