Christmas!

It's been a very busy couple of weeks back in England. and this is literally the first chance I have had to post some photos.  The first week back, we did our usual thing of going for a curry.  You can't get curry really in Germany, so we enjoyed it very much!  We also went to the IMAX cinema in London to see the new Star Wars film (Amazing!).  We went to the Apollo in London to see Caro Emerald perform.  The tickets were my birthday present from Matt.  Caro was wonderful, I really enjoyed myself.  She played all her hits, plus some new material, and a few Christmas songs and covers.

We also had a few days in York planned for last week.  We took the train up on the Thursday, arriving about 3pm.  We walked into the town centre, and I felt so sick that we had to go back to the hotel.  Then followed 8 hours of the Winter Vomiting Disease.  I finished, and an hour later, Matt started!  Matt's brother had caught it a few days earlier, so we must've got it from him.  We spent the next 48 hours in bed, and only left the hotel to get the train to Newcastle for our next stop.  So we didn't get to see any of York at all!  It was such a shame, but we will definitely go back.

We were visiting friends from Germany who moved back to the UK this year.  The boys went off to see Newcastle play football, and the girls did some Christmas shopping, before we all went out for dinner in the evening.  We went to the beach the next morning, which was lovely, and there was a nice craft and bric-a-brac market on which we had a good rummage around.  Unfortunately, Matt and I were still recovering from being so ill, and our friend had got a nasty ear infection, and his face had swollen over night, so we ended up getting dropped off at the station 3 hours early for our train, so that he could go to the walk in centre.  It was nice to see our friends, but the weekend was a bit of a disaster really!

Back in London, and feeling much better, we had a nice couple of days with Matt's parents, before heading to Mum and Dad's for Christmas day.  As is the family tradition, we went to the street in the next town to look at the ridiculous Christmas lights that raise money for charity every year.  I'm not sure that Matt was particularly impressed! but I love it.

We went to the Garden centre to see the reindeer...

... and then Christmas day was upon us...

The best present of all has to be Matt's to me; he bought me a DSLR camera!!!  I love it, and it can do so many things!  Here are some of the pictures I took playing around with it...

 

We went to Highcliff beach for a walk on boxing day, and of course had the obligatory coffee and cake.

Today we gave the dog a bath, and are off this evening to a party.  Only one more week until we're back to Germany, and to school, but that also means that the countdown to America for Easter is getting closer!!!