It has come round far too quickly but last night was the annual parents Christmas Party night – this year at the Queens Hotel in Leeds at their 1920’s Gangsters and Molls night.
Everyone had gone for ’20’s style attire for maximum effect and had a great evening. The boys on one table and the girls on the other, which lots of wine, beer, dancing and of course shots…
The fun ran through until about 1am when the taxis came to take us all away to slumber and lemsip.
The boys took a Friday night trip to Windermere for a few cheeky pints before staying at Eds place and heading out to Grizedale Forest first thing on Saturday morning.
It was pretty cold (1 Celcius) but only a relatively short trail (circa 10 miles) but it was pretty hard going – daddy has half a cold so wasn’t feeling 100% so it took about half the ride to actually feel in the zone – the forest track sections were really good with lots of jagged rocks to keep us on our toes. The black section was visited at the end of the ride and added about another 2 miles to the overall tally as we had to get all the way back to the top of the hillside – daddy did a great job of falling off right at the top in front of the chaps who were repairing the trail – to their amusement 🙂
We hope to be able to get back there sometime as it was a lot of fun all told, just a long way to go there and back in a day.
Up early this morning and out to Beamish Museum to make the most of our annual passes 🙂
A truly terrific day was enjoyed by all in cold but lovely weather and we got to explore the parts of the museum that were closed in March when we were there last 🙂
A long way to drive but so worth it 🙂
Christmas has truly landed in Beamish already 🙂
The steam powered carousel was just incredible – only managed the one snap of it on the phone – see above.
Today after Vicky had her hair cut etc, we head out to the Methley Christmas Tree Farm to select our number 1 Christmas Tree for ForkHall. We walked around for around 30 minutes much to the distaste of the boys (although they did enjoy budging around in the muddy tracks from the tractors) before giving in and selecting one of their pre cut trees – the ones they buy in rather than grow and cut down. It is a really good one although at £39 is significantly more expensive than the usual ones that we cut ourselves.
Anyway, here it is on the top of Emily – it is around 5 1/2 feet tall although this picture does not suggest it is more than about 4 feet…
So, the tree is sat in a stand in the conservatory having a large drink and getting used to the new home. We will keep feeding it water for a couple of days before dressing it in readiness for Christmas.
Therefore, we got the decorations out and put the new big tree (that Vicky bought in Costco a few weeks back) up in the lounge and popped the Disney decorations onto it. The lounge is transformed into a lovely Christmas scene and we just need a couple of four way power extension leads to setup Mickey’s Marching Band and the snow scenes and the room is all set.
We also need to look at getting the icicle lights sorted around the front of the house and see if we can set the automation system to drive the lights all properly.
Finally, James and aconite came round before we head out to the tree farm with your Felicity – as you would expect from having James and aconite as parents, the little mite was v content and seemed totally at peace just taking it all in – she also seemed like she could be hungry all of the time – again I think this comes from the parents 🙂 Great to see them doing so fabulously 🙂
Simon is on the train heading to London Town and having just passed Grantham station noticed that the fields and trees down here all have that beautiful white sheen of frost 🙂 he is thankful for being in the warm train carriage but what a beautiful morning 🙂
Guess it is going to be slippy underfoot today – be careful out there…