The bit in the middle!

Good morning/afternoon/evening blogland friends

How was it for you?? Did all your hard work - shopping, cooking, planning and making pay off?

It did here :)

Christmas Day started about 7am when 2 very excited children came into our room armed with their stockings and mugs of tea for all.  Stockings were opened in our bed and both very happy with what Santa had brought them.  The boys also gave MrVV & I our pressies from them - I am the proud owner of a gorgeous scarf and fluffy socks from Joules :) MrVv got a hipflask and a guide to being a grumpy old man (not that sometimes he needs much help ;) ).

We came downstairs and as is tradition, the pressies under the tree are given out and the boys get their pressie from us.  Little son did know he was getting a new phone from us - the first time he's not had a hand-me-down but Big son had no idea what he was getting.  He unwrapped his pressie and opened the box - even the pedal in there gave him no clue immediately nor did the note saying 'for something that goes with me head to the garage'. It was only as he opened the garage down and looked inside that the penny dropped and a huge smile appeared on his face - a gorgeous, new, huge moutain bike was waiting for him.  At this point I realised I'd not got my camera so missed this wonderful photo opportunity. 

In fact I missed lots of photo chances on Christmas Day as I never did managed to go and get my camera!!

Boxing Day was much quieter just the 4 of us and a chance to play,ride, read or use our new pressies.  The boys were given Airfix kits by an Aunt & Uncle and were keen to get started on these (I must thank James May for getting them re-interested in traditional stuff - our meccano has been dusted down and is now being used again).

If you look carefully on the right hand side, you can see part of MrVV christmas pressie - a homebrewing kit.  At the moment its just doing whatever it does in the huge bucket - later in the week its got to be bottled and then left for a a few weeks before it can be sampled - now its going to be wonderful rather like our local Adnams or awful like the peapod burgundy (I know thats wine) that Tom & Barbara made in the Good Life - would be happy for somewhere inbetween!!

What did I get for Christmas??? Lots - coming from a large family it tends to be one huge pressie fest this time of year even though amongst my sisters we have a Secret Santa and only buy for one person.  This pic is a brief summary;

Now yesterday was a bank holiday here in the UK and so like sheep we joined the 1,000's of others and headed to the sales;

To be very honest it was not a great day - firstly MrVV has decided he needs a new armchair so we visited every furniture store we could find and came home empty handed. The boys wanted to go into the main town to spend christmas vouchers so we found the last remaining parking space and headed in the high street.  Yuck it was heaving - mainly with sale shoppers but also with football fans - we hadn't realised Ipswich were playing at home :(  We battled through the crowds and the boys were able to add to their book collections and MrVV & I got a couple of bargains before we decided enough was enough and we headed back home.

Today is another stay at home day - the menfolk have been out on their bikes and I've attempted to do some tidying and blog catching up.  We've visitors this afternoon - my little brother is coming to see us - am quite excited as we've not seen him since June.

I hope you all are enjoying your break and are having fun with your pressies.

See you soon

xxxxx Vicki xxxxx