Merry Christmas to one and all!

I hope everyone's had a good Christmas, thank you for all the good wishes.
My day started with church, we had a reasonably sized congregation, lots of good singing too. The church was looking lovely.
Before leaving If put the turkey in the oven and set a couple of other things out. By the time I'd got home Joyce and Colin between them had peeled a root vegetable mountain and prepared the sprouts!
We set the table and sat down with a coffee too await the arrival of our guests. Katy and family arrived first, bubbling other with excitement, they took had been in church. Joan arrived not long after. She's a University friend who also loves in Edinburgh, her daughter works in London though and was on duty today, do Joan came and joined us - she's very used to our degree of craziness and disorganisation thank goodness. We had a marathon off present opening, Isobel was incandescent with excitement at the books I picked up for her last week, until she opened her Glinda goodies, when I thought she was going to bounce off the ceiling. Eilidh in her more restrained way was pleased with her Zara outfit, she's got more coming on Sunday on her birthday!
Over lunch we had a video call with Alloy and family in South Africa, they too were bubbling over and had spent part of the morning in the pool. I'm so looking forward to seeing them back here next week. To their relief the weather in Jo'burg has greatly improved from the 16' and raining of last week!
Christmas pudding happened, as is our custom, a couple of hours after dinner as we were sitting around the lounge reading, playing games, chatting and generally enjoying each others company. My great grandmother's recipe was delicious, although I have to confess to ignoring the "just a very little rum or sherry to moisten the mix and no more" instruction and adding a good glug of brandy alongside lots of whole cherries and pecans, when I was 'following' her recipe.
Part of my present to Katy is the top shot in the collage. When she was in P6, she played the lead role of Wendy in the school musical of Peter Pan. The performance lasted almost two hours. At the time I bought a copy of the video, I had it converted to digital as a gift..... more to the family in a way. Although they've seen loads of pictures, this was an extended video of their mum, slightly younger than Eilidh is now. I presented it along with a photo album and lots and lots of popcorn, so the first part of that was our after dinner entertainment. I was at the time, and remain so now, incredibly impressed at what a tiny ten year old girl could do. In the shot she'd just finished a solo almost 5 minutes long. The girls loved it, Katy cringed and I was a super proud mummy transported back to a packed school assembly room at Mary Erskine's. I could have watched it for hours.
Joan set off around 7. 30 to walk home, determined she didn't want a lift. I was happy to hear confirmation in around an hour that she'd made it back to the Grange. I'm so pleased she was with us.
I drove the family home around eight and after I got back we three settled down to a quiet evening of TV and taking it in turns to nod off on the couch.!
In the words of Tiny Tim - God bless us every one.
Happy Christmas everybody and thank you for your blip friendships.