Busy Christmas with Friends

Wow what a Christmas... We would just like to wish you all a Happy New Year and for us, we hope it's a better one. So what have we been up to... Well we have been with snakes, and chickens round the Christmas tree, and had Christmas dinner with the elephants. We have sat on the sofa with Murphy the Dog, and diced with the Cybermen. We slept in four different houses while we were away and met up with loads of friends and family (there are too many to mention)........ don't ask how we squeezed them all in.

Thomas had his thirteenth birthday and we all had a evening meal at Prezzo's, one of his favourite eating out spots; it was a good warm up before Christmas. We had Christmas Day with Al's sister and Al's mum and dad, it was a lovely four generation family reunion.

We all crashed out in the afternoon On Boxing Day we went over to Del's brothers and the five kids and had just the best boxing day dinner with all the trimmings, playing all the new games everyone had got. We then got together with Bernie, Sarah, David & Hannah and Steve, Erica, Tanya & Zak, where the girls went to the pictures and the boys went out gliding for the day. We ended up in the pub and then back to the house for some more food. We then set off for London where we took Thomas out for the day. We gave him a joint birthday and Christmas present which was to go to the Doctor Who Experience. As you could see from his Birthday cake he is a massive fan... We had a great day and were surprised ourselves at how good it was. Thomas hasn't stopped talking about how we all defeated the daleks. We ended the day showing him round the lights of London and popping into Hamley's of course... On Thursday we braved the morning round the January sales at Bluewater and on the way back we popped in to see Len's (Del's dad) Brother John and Diane. We came away from there with a large jar of pickled beetroot and onions. It was lovely to see them.... On the Friday we chilled through the day and in the evening we met up with cousin Dave and Diane who treated us with a lovely spread and loads of beer. We came away from there at 2.00am in the morning and with three CD's as a Christmas present. Another great night!!!

This lead us on nicely to New Years Eve where we wandered over to Steve and Erica's who were having a house party. We helped set up the rooms and food for the evening, but ended up out on the patio playing Beer Pong.It's a game with a mix of drinks and a ping pong ball, yep we were all slaughtered except our god daughter Tanya (here with her thumbs up) who won the Beer Pong league. It was lovely by the large fire we had going, where we warmed up.There was a party going in a house opposite and at midnight we all got together in the street with balloons and party poppers, laughter and tears. What a year 2011 was......

All a bit worse for wear we all had a table booked for a New Years Day bash. It was the perfect end to the start of the new year... On the Monday we caught up with some sleep and spent some time with Pam and Alf (Al's mum and dad) before we made our way back on the Tuesday to Derwent6.

When we arrived the strong winds had blown the barrels of the roof and Derwent6 had a cold feel about it. We soon got the fire going with the central heating, and Derwent6 was back to T shirt in half a hour. We would just like to thank George for looking after Derwent6 while we were away. We had got a lot of DVD's for Christmas and in the sales, so we set about seeing some of them in the evening while being rocked by the wind.