Late Christmas

I meant to post before this but what with one thing and another I didn't get round to it. Christmas was a very strange affair this year as our little family was short by 2, my supremely cool sister was stuck on the other side of the world in a New Zealand hostel as she tried to get her Australian student visa sorted out and as getting a flight from Australia at this festive time of year is damn near impossible not the mention costing the same as a new car we had to manage without her. We where also missing Dad who died on December 27th last year, it was very strange to be without out him and in many ways no long feels much like Christmas, I suspect it will feel this way for many years to come but the 3 of us Rich, Me and Mum made the best of it.

A few of our Christmas decorations, its quite hard getting the house to look festive, as you are fighting against the overwhelmingly patterned carpet, which is terrible distraction (Our cat Stella was sick on it over Christmas and it took me 15 minuets to see it as it blended effortlessly with the damn pattern) Fingers crossed by next year we will have ripped it all out and burned it!

A small sample of our lovely presents, we did have more but as its a very grey day today I'm having trouble getting decent pics! We kept out spending to a tight budget this year as we are both pretty strapped right now, what with the purchase of shiny new cookers and all! The cooker by the way is fantastic, we only got it hooked up about 3 days before Christmas, so some rapid practise was in order, Rich did a brilliant job on the day and cooked the most wonderful Christmas dinner (despite the gas pressure being quite low as every man and his dog was cooking at the same time!)
On the present front we where lucky enough to finally get a second hand chicken coop from my Mum and Sister.... 

I am beyond excited by this! I have wanted chickens for at least 5 years but we never got round to it at the old house, we are going to have to build an enclosure to keep them in as we get a lot of foxes around here. We have a large concrete slab which used to have a greenhouse on it but has since rotted and been pulled down, the plan now is to build a fox and cat proof run by May as thats when my Birthday is!

So a fairly ok Christmas, we got to see quite a few friends and had some yummy eats and now suddenly we are into January and 2011, where does all the time go?!