Hatty Christmas...

Backblipped 27.21.21

A flurry of texts early afternoon announcing all our negative LFT results meant our family get together was on.  Woo hoo!

The fun and mayhem began at 4pm when the gang arrived.  Coffee and cake preceded Prosecco and present opening.  Great fun watching everyone opening their surprises, especially Esme who takes delight in absolutely everything.  As you can see, they all liked their chocolate orange Santa hats :-))

Esme was very keen to show us her party dress and sparkly party shoes.  She got a watch as part of her Christmas and when asked the time always announces five o'clock, which is perfect as that's G&T time :-)) 

We congratulated Andrew & Nikki on their engagement and admired Nikki's beautiful ring.  No wedding date set as yet so hopefully time for me to lose weight find the right hat ;-). It was also Ele's birthday so we toasted her and sang Happy Birthday.  Esme led the singing.

I was a bit worried about dinner as there were quite a few dishes that required being in the oven at the same time but between the Aga and the electric oven it all came right in the end.  It was lovely to see everyone having seconds and some thirds, especially as this lot are known for being a little fussy :-)

A fun evening of chat and laughter with Esme and Lola being the main entertainment.  Esme was still bouncing around three hours after her usual bedtime!  I wish I had her energy!  

Eventually her batteries ran out and she went upstairs to bed with her mum.  I was really pleased she went to bed happily as this is the first time she's stayed over with us.  Nikki came back downstairs a short while later to say Esme had conked out pretty quickly.

The rest of us called it a night just after midnight.

Such a lovely family day that meant so much after not being able to get together last year.  We'll never take it for granted again!