Christmas in a Nutshell

Happy Christmas! As always the season was full of madness and mayhem. We went to my mum and dad's for our annual pre-Christmas dinner and it was as noisy, chaotic and marvellous as ever. There are fifteen of us now so it's getting more and more difficult to squeeze us all in .. mum managed it though. This was the view taken from my mobile phone, as you can see everyone is far too busy with their dinner to bother to turn and smile which is just as it should be. We had a treasure hunt for the children after lunch, just for chocolate but then, what else do you want to hunt for at Christmas .. they all enjoyed it.

The weather stayed cold and snowy throughout the Christmas holidays, it was our first white Christmas in a long while (though strictly speaking it can't be called that because snow has to actually have fallen on the day and it didn't .. well, not here anyway!) I did my best to watch all of my favourite Christmas films .. 'The Grinch', 'Scrooge' (Albert Finney), 'Prancer', 'Nightmare before Christmas', 'The Muppet Christmas Carol' and 'The Polar Express'. Somehow, we didn't manage to see 'The Snowman' .. I don't know what went wrong or how we overlooked it but it happened. It's the first time since it came out that we haven't seen it on Christmas Day.

I received lots of books which was great, some of which I asked for and some which are complete surprises. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into them. I'm not good at keeping to resolutions but I really must make more of an effort to read from my bookshelves in 2011 but it leaves me in a bit of a quandary because I want to support my local libraries too .. it would be a disaster if any of them closed down and they will if they don't get enough support. I guess I will just have to try and do both.

It has to be said that the main thing I get for Christmas is always indigestion! There is nothing like a few days of turkey, christmas pudding, crackers, cheese, crisps, cake, mince pies and chocolate to make you feel more than a little dyspeptic. It's just not the right time of year to eat healthily. January will soon be upon us and that's the time to be abstemious as far as calories are concerned. In the meantime we will eat, drink and be merry .. after all, there's always Alka-Seltzer!

My attempt at Rocky Road.

Our quieter but none the less calorific Christmas dinner at home.