Here are a few photos from our Christmas day and yesterday (Sunday) when we were decorating the cake that Lorraine’s mum sent. The long-haired French dude is Sebastien, our au pair, who left on boxing day after six months with us.

We had a lovely Christmas day. The kids got a Thomas the Tank(en) Engine train set and a garage along with loads of cars. Freya didn’t wake up until 8 so we were quite lucky. Santa had left a few presents outside the bedroom door, including a Flip Mino camcorder for Lorraine, so we opened them before going down to see what Santa had left downstairs. Lorraine shot a lot of video on the Flip and we’ll hopefully get some online soon. It actually took a while to copy across to the computer, but hopefully that’s just because we were using the keyboard’s USB connector and it’ll be faster going straight in.

So, enjoy the photos and we’ll be back with video soon!

Freya was poorly through the night on Christmas eve, poor little love. She was sick several times, necessitating two bed changes (ours and hers). She spent most of the day laying on the sofa, but thankfully she did perk up for long enough to open her presents.

I think we did not too badly, considering that we’re trying to fit as normal a Christmas as we can into the madness of packing to leave. Decorations were therefore minimal, but we did put up some tinsel and have a candlelit dinner. I had a pork chop and did roast potatoes and steamed Brussels sprouts, carrots and broccoli (well, you have to have sprouts, right?). It was rather good and we had a good feed, leaving the orange and cranberry Christmas pud until later on, round about Eastenders time.

So, here are a few pics that I shot in the morning. Enjoy!

Advent Ark

Here’s a brief run down of our Christmas day with some photos. So, first up was the advent ark. Freya really enjoyed opening up the doors each day to see what animal was behind the door. Much more fun that a crappy advent calender. So, that finished yesterday.

Christmas Sock

I brought Freya home a new Christmas stocking on Christmas eve and she immediately recognised it as a “sock”, so I guess it’s her Christmas sock. We hung it on the bedroom door and she discovered it when she got up. She was delighted!

Thank you note from Santa

Then through to the living room where we discovered that Santa had indeed wolfed down his tasty mince pie and egg nog. He said to say that he enjoyed it very much and even had the courtesy to leave a thank you note!

Then it was time to launch into the presents. Our apartment is really too small for us to put up a tree that’s big enough to put presents under it, but we did a pretty good job I think.

Presents wise, we got lots of small gifts rather than one big one and I think that was the right way to go. She got a really nice jigsaw puzzle, a wooden pizza and some wooden fruit with a wooden knife and a chopping board. There was also the descant recorder in C, which is a proper instrument and not a toy. She’s had fun blowing it as loud as she can, so we’re having to teach her that she doesn’t need to blow quite so hard the whole time.

Freya with her recorder

Hamish had a fun day too. He got his first ever Christmas present brought through to him in bed (I don’t imagine that that will ever happen again!) and enjoyed his frog dolly from Grandma and Grandad.

Hamish with his frog

In the afternoon we sat down and watched Monsters Inc. and really enjoyed it. What a great movie! Thankfully we had the foresight to record it as Freya asked for it again on Boxing day.

Merry Christmas Hamish!!

So that just about wraps it up for this year.