School finished on Friday the 20th and it coincided with me finishing all my Christmas shopping. The house was looking great, the festive drinks had begun to flow, we had Home Alone on in the evening, so it really felt like the holiday season had started. Its the most wonderful time of the year!
Over the next few days, we really just hung out in town and enjoyed the Christmas build up: drinking vin chaud at the markets, getting haircuts, getting William his annual Christmas balloon, having more drinks at home and generally feeling as festive as you could possibly imagine. The success of my tiramisu a couple of weeks ago really set me up for the main event: making a massive one for Christmas Day. I got that sorted early doors on Christmas Eve morning so that I wasn't having to do too much later that day, or on Christmas Day itself. It's all about the planning!
We had arranged to spend Christmas Eve with the Titos, and we really had a great time with them. Hayley and I discussed and agreed that curry night would be a great shout (keeping the Christmas Eve curry tradition going). They came round to ours late in the afternoon and we all headed out for drinks in Place Clemenceau, as well as a team ride on the big wheel. Things all started to close around 6pm which worked out perfectly: our tummies were all ready for some asian cuisine! I did a lamb saag and Hayley did a thai chicken curry which was absolutely delicious. It was great fun, sitting round and talking nonsense and getting into bottle after bottle of champagne. Great times.
I'd love to tell you that we all headed off to bed, and woke up fresh as daisies the next morning, but William, absolutely overwhelmed with Christmas and Santa, barely slept a wink, keeping us up all night crying, and generally being unsettled. We all finally stumbled downstairs on Christmas morning at about 9am, exhausted, but ready to face the madness: "He's been!"
In the excitement, I barely took any photos. I've been trying to enjoy the big moments a bit more, rather than just shoot them. But here's some shots of William when he came down at first, plus some of him doing what he's been desperate to do: paint a plane like the little boy in his french book.
We were heading to Lee and Conrad's place for about 1.30pm - 2, and we had a few things to take with us. As well as the tiramisu, we did pigs in blankets and sprouts. It was actually a bit tricky as we eneded up prepping and cooking on Christmas Day - something I'd have rather avoided.
We got round to Lee and Conrads and the place was already in full swing with kids playing, adults drinking and the kiwi boys shelling oysters in the garden. Once again, by ending up in the thick of the nonsense, I hardly took any photos, but that's probably a good thing because after we all ate, then did Secret Santa for the kids, and then for the adults, I ran a game of Who's In The Hat and the whole night ended up loose as! I think we all thought this was probably going to be a reasonably tame day, particularly as the boys were training on Boxing Day, but oh, how wrong we were. It was a good job we'd dusted down William's mountain buggy and threw it in the boot of the car as we didn't leave until about 1am and we absolutely needed to walk home (which took us about 40mins!). An absolutely cracking day.
Boxing Day wasn't as slow as you might imagine. Iain had to go to work in the early afternoon and after he came home, I walked over to Lee and Conrad's place to collect the car, and any other stuff we forgot. Iain actually came home and was crook the rest of the night (more like a short, sharp gastro thing than a hangover though) so we just hunkered down and chilled out.
Merry Christmas indeed!
Lorna. :-)
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