Christmas 2018

One of the joys of Christmas this year was that, with William being at school, he was involved in a variety of things during December that really helped get us into the festive spirit early. These included a Christmas performance at the Marches du Noel involving all the Saragosse schools; a school nativity play; a rugby kids Christmas party at the stadium and the general excitement of the decorations going up and the Christmas markets in town. 

By the first week of December I had William in full Christmas attire at every opportunity. The photo below is us doing the weekly shop at Auchan. We also got the Christmas tree up, with the introduction of our new decorations, known as the Wattingers (from In The Night Garden... fame)

William then met Santa at the Section kids Christmas party. Remarkably, he wasn't scared in the slightest. 

The first of two festive performances. A bit random this one, but what can you expect with a class of three-year-olds?

Here he is celebrating his first stage appearance with some glutenous cake (and his artwork, that I had to buy at the market. A complete racket.

The force is strong with this one...

William's school also performed a Nativity play. Unfortunately, this was during the day so I had to go myself. I didn't really know what was going on as it was all a bit of a rabble, but William got his time in the spotlight. As far as we could understand, he was actually playing the Baby Jesus!

On the Saturday before Christmas, we, and seemingly every other family with young children went into town for a last wander around the markets and a look at the animations. We bumped into our friends Sandra and Jean-Nic and their son Gideon who is the same age as William. It was lovely to let the boys run around and for us adults to have a couple of vin chauds. As they don't have any family in Pau either, we also said to them to come round on Christmas Day.

In true french style, we began the celebrations early, with a champagne breakfast on Christmas Eve and before we knew it, the big day was upon us and we were in the midst of wrapping paper and new toys. William didn't quite know what to make of it all.

I spent most of the afternoon in the kitchen, preparing our dinner of guinea fowl and all the usual Christmas trimmings. If I do say so myself, it was a blooming outstanding feed. It was also lovely to spend this time with Roxy, and Sandra JeanNic & Gideon. Roxy's brother and his girlfriend also joined us later in the day after they drove down from Romain. 

All in all, a really lovely time. 

Merry Christmas, folks :)

LM.