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.