A Very Busy, Christmassy Two Weeks

This was two weeks ago, goodness me!  It feels like much longer than that.  My colleagues and I all look absolutely exhausted!  The last week was seriously hard work.  In most of my classes, we had parties and watched films, except for my year 4s, who were desperate to finish writing their stories set in imaginary worlds.  They worked so hard on them, and I am thrilled with the results - probably the best piece of writing each of those 4 children has ever written.

We had lots of christmassy things going on during the last week - our Christmas lunch was lovely.  My whole office managed to go together.  4 of us went to have our Christmas nails done - which are still looking fabulous I might add...

Matt had a football tournament with the school team, which they ended up winning. This is their lovely team photo.

Finally the last day of term arrived.  This is a few of us with our margaritas after school.  The photo below is us recreating a meme of a man jumping out of a window.  We'd all gone a bit doolally by this point!

... yep, pretty doolally...

A group of girls went to see Legally Blonde the musical in the last week.  It was great fun, and so nice to do something in the evening, rather than just slobbing in front of the TV and falling asleep at 9.

We also had the staff panto, about a superhero with magic pants.  My office were the 'evil minions', and we had to do 2 dances.  It was great fun, and the kids absolutely howled with laughter at the whole thing.  Teachers have to volunteer to be in it, but why wouldn't you!  Our office is always up for a laugh.

We had saved Saturday for relaxing and packing, and we were quite glad we had, since we were so exhausted.  18 weeks is such a long term. We have pretty much done half a year, since the last terms are only 10 weeks each.  We said goodbye to our lovely kitties (our cleaner is looking after them), and headed to the airport for a 12 hour flight to London Heathrow.  Luke picked us up, which was lovely of him.

We got home at about 6pm, so only had to stay awake for a couple of hours.  I managed until 9pm, but Matt went to the pub until midnight!  Everyone was still at work for a couple of days, so we had a few days to recover.  Actually, neither of us got jet lag particularly. We went for a Wetherspoons fry up of course...

... and have since stopped for quite a few coffees and cake...

Sean and Markus came over for a few days from Germany, which was fab. We had 'Crunch' one day 'Christmas brunch', with free-flow prosecco.  Yum!  Al came to meet us with a surprise... Jenna, back from South America!  They are such great friends, we had a fab time.

We also spent an afternoon in London with just Sean and Markus, in the pubs, and then we found a German Christmas market in Leicester Square for a hot cider.

We also managed to squeeze in a lunch with Charlee, Lou and Ben, which was great.  No photos though - too busy chatting!

I headed to Mum and Dad's on Saturday, and we were straight out to the garden centre to see the reindeer - our Christmas tradition.  Then, of course, on to the street of Christmas lights, which has recently won £10,000 for charity for their lights.  It's so cheesy, but we love it.

Christmas eve, we went for a lovely brisk walk in the forest (and a coffee and cake).

And then it was Christmas day!  Matt was at his aunts...

Our Christmas day was lovely and relaxed.  Dad and I got up at 7.30 to walk the pooch in the rain, then croissants for breakfast, and opening pressies while the turkey cooked.  The dinner was delicious!  Then we played Linkee before settling down for some Dr Who and Strictly.  Matt's Christmas sounded a lot busier.  I chatted to everyone on Skype, which was funny, no one could hear me and it sounded like chaos!

On Boxing day, we went to Nanny's for the day and to enjoy our leftovers - bubble and squeak - delicious.  In fact it may be my favourite meal at Christmas, more so than the Christmas day dinner!  It was lovely to see Nanny, and watch her open her presents.

When we got back, Matt, Tony and Luke popped over for a coffee.  They had been watching West Ham play Bournemouth, and had driven all the way from Essex.  Tony and Luke stayed in a hotel, and Matt stayed with us, but had been unwell in the night, so went to bed really early, poor thing.  He was much brighter this morning, when we all went to the cliff top for breakfast.  Then Mum and I went to Castle Point for shopping - a very successful shopping trip indeed.  It was lovely to go out an spend the day shopping with Mum.  Poor Matt, Tony and Luke didn't get home until 5  - it took them 4 hours to get home!

Tomorrow, the business continues.  I am in Winchester seeing Annmarie, then it's the Chums annual get-together, before New Years Eve.

The Penultimate Week

Only one more week to go of school before the Christmas holidays!  This week was a struggle. Such hard work keeping spirits up and knowing that there is another full week ahead.  But we managed it, somehow!  The kids are all exhausted, and so are the teachers - you can see it on everyone's faces. Everyone is a bit grumpy and we are just counting down the days.  We haven't really had a proper relaxing break since Mexico at Easter, that was 8 months ago!  Since then, our week's holidays have been, lots of visitors or moving country, not exactly relaxing.  Roll on Christmas, and then Sri Lanka in February!

Anyway, this week, we had the tree lighting ceremony at school on Monday, which was lovely.  Our friend is in the community choir, and there was hot chocolate, mulled wine and mini mince pies - very festive.  On Tuesday, we headed to the market to pick up Matt's suit, which he has had made - the trousers aren't quite right, so we will go back again next week.  Matt was meant to meet me there, but his meeting went on until 6.15!  So I wandered about, not really in the mood for shopping, until he got there. I did manage to buy a few small Christmas pressies. One more to go, then I am completely finished.  On Wednesday and Thursday, I was in bed by 8.30pm!  Matt played football on Thursday and got back late.  It was practice for the tournament on Saturday, which his team won!

Friday night, we went to our friends house for a Christmassy gathering.  It was great company, and great food (homemade mince pies, leek and chicken pies, teriyaki chicken lettuce parcels, chocolate dipped strawberries, and plenty of fizz - our friend is an excellent cook). It all got a bit out of hand - people need to let their hair down a bit more at the end of term.  We had very sensible adults downing wine and whiskey, then being knighted for being so cool, with a children's plastic cricket stump!  It was great fun though, and just what we needed.

On Saturday, I had the day to myself. Matt had his football tournament, then went out to the '12 pubs of Puxi' pub crawl in the evening. I opted for a quiet day/night in with the cats and watching films.  It was just what I needed, and I feel so refreshed today.  Below are some excellent cat sleep spot photos!

Today, we are having another lazy day.  The pollution is bad today, so not leaving the house is a good idea.  I did pop out for an hour to a shop with a friend.  On the way we saw a dog on it's own limping.  It had a collar, so had probably been hurt by a bike and run away.  We spent ages trying to catch him, but he was just too frightened and was growling and snarling.  Eventually we had to give up, but we have put photos out of him, so hopefully his owner will find him!

Now for pizza and a movie in my new unicorn onesie!

A Chistmassy Weekend

What a lovely weekend we have had.  Finally, the Movember moustache has gone (thank goodness)!  Matt's Movember team raised about £200 for charity, which is fantastic.

Today and yesterday, we were dog sitting for our friends.  Snickers is such a cute little thing.  Here he is going for his walk...

This is Sooty in a bag - his favourite thing in the world is a paper bag.

Friday night was our staff Christmas party, which was really good fun.  It was at a theatre, which is usually a burlesque club.  The food was awful! Carb city - the choice was chips, mash potato, plain pasta or rice. Yum, or not.  We had a lovely evening though, and I won 300 $MB (about £30) in the raffle for the local food takeaway website.

On Saturday it was our schools Winter Fair - a risky thing the day after the Christmas party!  I didn't have to work it because i'm a TA, but Matt had to do an hour on the bouncy castle.  I met him at the end of his duty for a wander around.  Our friend was about to start his duty, so we offered to take his two lovely little boys for an hour.  We ended up having so much fun with them.  Christmas school fairs are better with kids, because you get to do all of the kids game!  We had popcorn and cookies and won prizes and generally had a blast!  The boys now call Matt, Uncle Matt! haha!  Our fair was lovely actually, so Christmassy!  We've won something on the raffle, but they wouldn't tell us our prize over the phone so we will find out tomorrow - there were some incredible prizes on the list so fingers crossed for us that it's one of the big ones!  We've had such good luck this weekend!  Two raffles in two days.

We went to the local bar/restaurant for a thank you drink for looking after the kids, and ended up having dinner there.  It was a lovely evening to top off a lovely afternoon.  One of the boys had got a ink stamp as a prize and Matt managed to convince him to cover himself in this green stamp and go around saying 'Hulk Smash' to all the tables. It was so funny.  His parents are now trying to hire us as baby sitters.

Today, we had a lazy morning after walking and feeding Snickers.  Then this afternoon we went to the German Christmas market, which was at a German brewery called Paulaner.  It was lovely, but made me a bit homesick for Germany, especially at this time of year when all of our friends are sending photos of them at the markets.  It was really authentic looking, and we even got Gluhwein in Christmas mugs.  It was lovely being there with our new friends, and sharing our knowledge of what was authentic and what was wrong!

So, a very social weekend, but a really good fun one.  We have a nice group of friends here, and we are very lucky.

Oh, this is Snowball the parrot...