Our Year, 2015

January

A foggy walk through the fields surrounding our village. We will never forget the 'Tesco' incident!!

February

 Our first National Trust property of the year, The Workhouse. A thoroughly fun day out!

March

 A day to remember. The Royal Cortegé coming through our village on the day of King Richard III's reinterment, 

April

A surprisingly warm day trip to Snowshill Manor and Chastleton House.  

May

 Our family holiday to Southwold.

June

 Waterfight!

July

 A week spent in our favourite place. 

August

 A road trip to the Peak District. A good old ramble and a play in the river. We waved goodbye to a jelly shoe!

September

 Canons Ashby with this grump and his Pappy

October

 Pumpkin Patch fun.

November

 Packwood. Louie loves Alistair so much!

December

Merry Christmas!

Burnley

Just as usual, we spent the days after Christmas with our northern family up in Burnley. Though the floods of Storm Eva/Frank had hit quite badly, we were quite safe and dry in Poppar's house.
We seemed to have a very busy few days, fixing cars and visiting family, but we spent most of our time with Dani and the kids. Oh what fun they had!

Christmas Day 2015

Christmas Day started at 3:30am in our buzzy household. At 3:45am I heard a rustling noise, I went into Louie's bedroom to find him wide awake surrounded by the gifts from his stocking!! Bless him, he was just too excited. We gathered up the gifts and tucked him back up into bed and he promised to go back to sleep! At about 6, I woke again and went in to him and the gifts were out again! Lego built, meccano built, books read - the little bee was incredibly excited and he couldn't contain himself! Santa even brought him a horse stable for the horses he had in his advent calendar, isn't Santa clever!

At about 7:30, we went down to do the presents. My first gift was the Hornsea pottery, genuine 1970's tea cup, which was absolutely perfect! We all had a selection of gifts but the main event was a very special present from Santa, but not from the North Pole, from somewhere in the South Pacific...

There was only one gift that Louie had asked Santa for this year, Tracy Island. And as Dan and I had both wanted it as a child and we were painfully denied (!), we both agreed that it was only fair to get one for Louie (so that we could relive our childhoods and play with it too...). We hunted down the original Matchbox Tracy Island from 1993 and the Weetabix figures to match too. Everyone was so excited!

After lunch, Nana and Grandad arrived. Louie changed into his adorable Christmas outfit and we all had some more gorgeous gifts including the Lego racing truck Louie has wanted for months (and subsequently forgotten about) and some deckchairs for the summer! Just what I had wanted! We were all very grateful :)

Then it was time for Christmas dinner.

We started with Paté, then for the main event we had roast ham with piggies and so much veg. Pudding was a little funny! As I don't like Christmas Pud, I made a Chocolate Tart for Louie and I but bought a little pud for everyone else, however I didn't look at the instructions! 2 hours to steam, oops! So we did have to make an emergency plea to our next door neighbour, they popped it in their microwave and saved the day!

By the time we had finished dinner, it was bedtime for a little bee. He was asleep in minutes (oh man, he was tired!) and then after Nana and Grandad took off home, Dan sat and played on his playstation for a little while, which is a treat for him, and I had a lovely look through my lovely gifts.

What a perfect Christmas.

Christmas Eve

What a busy week. Christmas Eve was no different. Lots of making at baking on the agenda.

A little bee was very sweet, playing on Crash Bandicoot for a short while, busying himself with leftover pastry and den building. School holiday heaven!

And of course, playing Santa. Though we were a little worried about not having many gifts this year, we needn't have, they always seem so many, especially crammed under a teeny tree!

Uni Pals 2015

Someone decided it was too long since the uni bunch had a get together so we organised a little party! An Italian feast at San Carlo, it was absolutely yummy! The last time we were all together like this was probably 2012/2013, so it was great to catch up with everyone.

As we were child free for the evening, we all decided to go to a local bar for a drink and a chat. I bumped into an old school friend (who remarked on our very boring Christmas party!!) but it was a truly lovely evening. We will have to make sure we get together before the big Ronzano wedding in August!

Calke at Christmas 2015

Today we went to Calke for our annual visit to see Father Christmas. We had planned to nip in and out to see Santa, however we had to wait for nearly an hour and a half (but thankfully it was a ticketed system this year) so we had a lovely lunch (as usual!), a good play in Squirts Stable and a walk down to the house.

Of course, Father Christmas was worth the wait and Louie got a lovely gift to take home for Christmas Day.

Its lovely to carry on these traditions each year, especially at a place that means so much to us :)