An Early Christmas Eve...

 

Tomorrow we are celebrating Christmas with my sister.  Full-on Christmas with everything except for sprouts because we don't like them!  and because it is Christmas tomorrow John and I had the day getting ready.  By 9.00am I was up to my armpits in Pigs in Blankets!!!  

Last minute decoration adjustments were made and the table laid by John and I did the food prep.  We are best separated in the kitchen!  Tomorrow's menu is home-made tomato soup with crispy onion croutons followed by turkey, roast potatoes and roast parsnips, carrots, peas, cauliflour and green beans, red cabbage, bread sauce, pigs in blankets and stuffing in onions and gravy.  John has made his pear crunch crumble for pud or there is a mince pie.

We will meet at the cemetery as Kaye wants to put a plant on Dad's grave.  We went to check my pot after we had been to Kritou Terra - it looked like it had been ravaged by the recent hail storms.  After that we are going to the Hotel for a drink.  Probably coffee as Kaye will be driving and Mum doesn't drink but that's fine - it will be a nice start to the day.  

We shot off down to Polis to do the recycling and to grab a few bits in Kaite's.  There were some fresh sprouts in there but we gave them a stiff ignoring.  It had been another nice sunny day although the clouds started to form late afternoon.  Some places actually got rain this evening but we seemed to avoid it.  We had a little local road block on our way home!

The remainder of our day was lovely.  When John nipped out to take Rachel to collect her car from the bodywork guy (she was delighted with the end result).  I started to get our supper ready.  We had paprika chips, salad and lovely fillet steak from Shuks.  It was so delicious I never stopped to take a photograph!

We sat down with a glass of wine and the Terry's chocolate orange that Laura had brought, put the gas fire on and after watching some of the football finally got round to watching the film A Boy Called Christmas which we had earmarked to watch last year but didn't.

It wasn't actually that cold this evening but Charlie appreciated the gas fire and it looks nice plus the gas has already been paid for.

On that note we have a lovely Christmas surprise today - the remainder of the outstanding winter fuel allowance hit our bank account.  We thought it had been forgotten but obviously not.  We wont have to worry about being cold and when we went to get petrol earlier Christos confirmed he would have wood for us when we want it in the New Year, not only that but he gave us a bag of the most delicious mandarins - they are the smell of Christmas for sure!