It's Christmas Morning 2024........

Oh my goodness, it's finally Christmas morning at long, long last .........

..... and the most wonderful day of the year, where you find us all truly, truly blessed in a limited edition, Hello Magazine, celebrity special, type way.  We've been soooooooooooooooo very, very spoilt!

I can't even tell you how emotional it's been, because Santa has absolutely knocked the snowball right out of the frozen Lapland park!

We'd asked for a shared surprise, but what he left us is almost tooooooooo much, because ......... we're going to be "beside the seaside" for part of the Christmas holiday, a long felt want for all of us, in particular the every fragrant Alice. 

Can you imagine our reaction as we opened Santa's card and read his letter?

He said he knows that until our beloved Iris and Bertie are a little older, we wouldn't ever want to be away from them on Christmas or Boxing Day, BUT, as it's still counted as being Christmas after Boxing Day and before New Year's Eve, he's sending us to our beloved Christchurch in Dorset, first thing on Thursday morning, for three whole days of sand and sea, in a hotel, with wonderful pre-booked meals and cocktails on tap at various locations.  Let's just say we were absolutely and totally overwhelmed and rendered silent for well on five minutes!

Tears shed of happiness and joy were shed, Christmas time by the sea, can it get any better and more wonderful than that?

Once we'd recovered there were lots of other presents to open, like the beautiful box of milk shake making bits and pieces from Jan The Fan, so it will be milkshakes akimbo later on today, probably sometime between lunch and tea and then after tea, inbetween Darrell's festive alchofrolic beverages!  What are we like?

There were hair bedecklements to adorn Alice's silky, soft hair, lot's of chocolates, socks, shower gel, after shave and silly bits and pieces ........

........ and then, Darrell couldn't believe that Nigel had actually managed to smuggle in one of the beautiful bicycle ornaments that had caught soooooo his eye when we were away on our Greek Odyssey back in September. More tears ensued, before he had to pull himself together in order to get our turkey in the oven at the optimum time for maximum succulence!

It's been quite a morning, thank you everyone so much, especially Santa.

We hope yours has been just as wonderful wherever in the world you are.  Have a lovely, lovely day xxxxxx