Merry Christmas

This was a different Christmas, with faces missing from our table, but most importantly everyone is safe and well and - God willing - we will all be back together next Christmas. With our youngest daughter now 14 Christmas starts a little later, though both girls were sitting on our bed opening stockings by 8am. (We always managed to avoid ridiculously early starts, as we imposed a "no waking us or opening anything before 7" rule which stuck!) Next year we will be down to just one stocking, with only TG left at home. And she is growing up fast! She has always been petite, but this year she has grown rapidly and is now 5 feet 5 inches tall - the same height as me, and almost as tall as her sisters. M and I still get a shock when we look at her and see the young lady who has suddenly replaced the child she was last year.

After opening stockings some of us got dressed and some of us sorted presents into piles for each person, then we opened gifts with occasional breaks to make breakfast and get the turkey in the oven. R received a negative result for her Covid test, so H and TG met up with her midway between her house and ours to swap presents. When they got back we set up a FaceTime call through the TV and watched each other open packages. In the slightly blurry picture (photo of TV screen) below you can see a very excited dog enjoying his stuffed toy pheasant. After that M took a bag of packages around to my brother and H and I did stuff in the kitchen. 

H was chief cook this year, leaving me to do a bit of vegetable chopping, to make the gravy, and to prepare an apple crumble for dessert. We had a minor catalogue of messy disasters, though none affected the quality of the final meal. H opened a jar of goose fat to use for potatoes which had been left out of the fridge and liquified, some spilled onto the black pepper grinder which had to be thrown out. Then something liquid (soy sauce? balsamic vinegar?) managed to spill itself in a cupboard, and while cleaning that up I dropped a full jar of wholegrain mustard which smashed on the floor. Just as we finished cleaning that up TG knocked my drink over. After that all went smoothly, and the end result was delicious. While we were dishing up, M took a large portion of everything round to my brother so he didn't miss out on Christmas dinner. 

After the main course we were so full we took a short break and played bananagrams (one of our new Christmas games) before eating the apple crumble. Then we slumped on sofas and watched TV for a while - the second half of Coco (one of our  favourite Disney movies), the Queen's Christmas message, and highlights from Strictly. I confess I may have dozed off for a while! Most of us didn't want much else to eat - TG had cheese and biscuits, M and I had small smoked salmon rolls, and H I think had chocolate! We played The Really Nasty Horse Racing Game (highly recommend this board game - fun and not too hard to learn), then the girls went upstairs while M and I watched the Call the Midwife Christmas special, which given the way this year has been felt even more of a treat than usual and may have required a tissue or two! Christmas this year may have been different, but it was still good.