Belated Merry Christmas

Having arrived home from Mexico late on Saturday night, we celebrated Christmas yesterday instead. After opening all our presents, thank you very much everyone, Tom disappeared into his bedroom to start the marathon Lego building frenzy that Christmas always brings, Lily was off playing with her American Girl doll, cat, dog and rabbit, Nick started reading one of his books after transerring all his golf clubs into his smart new golf bag and I was itching to start downloading music onto my smart new ipod. Having consumed some champagne the meal was thankfully a success and we got started on the red wine. Now we just have to write our thank you letters to y'all.

Feliz Navidad from Mexico

We flew out to Playa del Carmen, Mexico on Saturday 20th December for a week in the sun, this was our first meal out after a day in the sun - guess who forgot to take a hat on holiday?

After a couple of days lounging on the beach we ventured out in our hire car for a drive to Tulum. This is an old Mayan ruin similar to Chichen Itza only much smaller and a much shorter drive. It was funny getting into a manual car again after driving an automatic for 18 months, also the car had no power steering and even though it was a very small car it was really clunky and hard to drive. Got used to it very quickly though, unlike Nick, who managed to stall it once. heeheehee, so glad I didn't do that.

Another day spent lazing on the beach, building sandcastles and jumping waves and then on
Christmas Day we went on a boat trip out to a reef for a bit of snorkelling. This was great fun and even Lily had a go and enjoyed it. On the way back, Antonio, our man in charge of the boat decided to have some fun...

and went really, really fast bumping over all the waves and wakes from other boats. Flippin 'eck, I thought I was going to throw up, we were getting bumped about all over the place, I'm surprised one of us wasn't thrown overboard, I nearly lost my hat and was feeling quite sick, however as you can see Lily was loving it....She is happy in the picture, honest.

Happy Birthday John

Just thought I'd write an update today and take the opportunity to wish my big bruv a happy 40th. I can't believe he is 40, this means mine is creeping up on me too. How old must my parents feel if they have a son who is 40 ??!!! Yikes.

This week has seen Nick at the doctors with a swollen face (think John Merrick, not really). His cold got worse and had got into his sinuses or something so he needed drugs before we went off on our hols on Saturday. The Dr's kindly obliged and he came home with cough medicine, painkillers, antibiotics and decongestant.
He had a 'corridor party' at work yesterday which he kindly volunteered me to reheat a huge tray of turkey for. Needless to say I was not best pleased. After a hasty telephone consultation with my mum and Kate S (cooking goddess of Montgomery-soon to be lost back to Australia) and a look at Delia Smith's web page I went ahead and reheated it. This was not a success but thankfully I haven't heard about anyone not appearing at work today due to food poisoning. I'm guessing I won't be volunteered for this job ever again. Fortunately I also took in a lemon cake which I am pleased to say was a success.

Tom had his first game of football with his new team last night, and after a nerve wracking 40 minutes of play his team, Brazil, won. He did really well and has come on a lot since he first started playing.

Today I went to see 'A Christmas Carol' the musical at the theatre along with Tom and his classmates. It was a great production although not really my choice. Tomorrow he and Lily both have their christmas parties at school and lucky me, I get to help out at Tom's. Yay.
Luckily Nick and I are out for dinner tomorrow night, so that will be something to look forward to (and due to Nick taking all those drugs, he's driving so I get to have a glass (or 2) of wine.)

I'll take this opportunity to say Merry Christmas to y'all as we are off to Mexico on Saturday for a week of rest at Playa del Carmen. We are all really looking forward to it, although the weather forecast looks like it might be raining most days. I reckon I can cope with that though because it's going to be about 30C. HoHoHo..

Wally of the Year Award

We went to the christmas party last night and had good fun, unfortunately I am now suffering from a mild hangover.

Earlier on in the week I got the carpets professionally cleaned as they were quite grubby then within 36 hours of having them cleaned Nick managed to spill red wine all over the place. He has now been named Official Wally of the Year. I seem to recall it was his pint of milk that was spilt all over the carpet earlier on in the year and also his (or maybe it was Caroline's) pint of dark beer. Something of a trend here, I think.

Christmas is coming

Well, I have finally finished my christmas shopping (at least I think I have) and all the parcels that need to be sent to GB have gone and the cards are on their way today. Now I just have to wrap up everything and keep it all hidden from Tom & Lily.
Nick & I were at our first christmassy function yesterday afternoon and we received our first xmas cards of the year on Saturday. Next 'do' is on Thursday night.
There isn't really much else going on at the moment, still golfing and playing tennis, still going to my personal trainer (still not seeing much in the way of a stunning new body though - which is a bit disappointing frankly because Kate has turned into skinny minny). I should have slipped her some extra fattening food when she was here for dinnner on Friday night.

Walking in Memphis

I must remember to upload my photos in reverse order, this is from Saturday at Tupelo Buffalo Park. We got to feed the animals including the buffalo you can see in the picture. We were the only visitors there, obviously not that popular a destination so arriving at 9am was not required. Never mind, we had fun and were able to go and meet Tim & Deanna at her parent's house for lunch. They live in Hamilton, Alabama which is about half hour away from Tupelo. We had home made pizza and breadsticks for lunch - all made by Deanna at her father's pizzeria , Dinelli's Pizzeria in Hamilton (just in case you are ever passing through).

Above you can see the King of Rock n Roll looking cool, and no, we didn't buy the glasses afterwards, we rather cheekily put them back on the shelf after the photo.

That's Lily and I in our Elvis poses outside of Graceland. I think we all found it a bit of a disappointment and not being Elvis fans made it all the more of a let down. The house wasn't nearly as big as I was expecting and to add to the cramped feeling it was very overcrowded with crazy tourists (and us.) Although we did get a bit of a laugh at some of the fans.

Memphis is right on the border with Arkansas so we drove over the bridge and into Arkansas so we could tick another state off of our itinerary. I think its a bit of a cheat as we only stayed there for about 20 minutes while the children played in a small park before going to our accommodation for the evening. I didn't get a postcard so will have to go back if I want to count it for my stats. As it was Thanksgiving Day not even the visitors centre was open.

This is the famous 'Beale Street' in Memphis. As you can see it was VERY quiet. A poor choice for spending Thanksgiving Day. We had been warned by everyone who has already visited that there really isn't much to do in Memphis. Well, if you combine that with visiting on Thanksgiving Day there is nothing at all to do in Memphis. Oh, well, live and learn.

Below is a video Tom took in the car while we were travelling and they were bored. There is no sound unfortunately as it's taken with the old camera which Tom & Lily have the use of. Perhaps a career in film beckons.

Happy Thanksgiving

On Saturday Nick went round to Tim's for the day to watch the Ashes on DVD so Tom,Lily and I went to the cinema to see 'Bolt'. This was quite funny and we saw trailers for a couple of good movies coming out next month. When we got home from that we watched High School Musical, well, Lily & I watched it and Tom played with his Lego. Thought we had better watch the first one since HSM 3 is now out. Quite liked it so number 2 is now on order through Netflix. We are currently waiting on the Peter Sellers Pink Panther to arrive, I reckon Tom will like it very much.
On Sunday we took Tom golfing, he did really well for his first time out on the course and is keen to play again. Apart from that we have done nothing of note this last week. I did almost kill us all on Monday when I put the gas fire on and forgot to open the chimney vent. Big oops. Luckily I happened to mention that I thought I could smell something 'like something is burning' and Nick said - did you open the chimney? This happened a couple of times last year as well but I normally noticed the smell immediately, not this time, so all the windows and doors got opened up for a half hour or so to make sure there was no nasty gas left in the house.
The children finish school today for their Thanksgiving holiday, they look like they could do with a break from school, especially Lily, she looks really wiped out. No early morning school run for me tomorrow which is good as we have friends round for dinner tonight....