It was a warm and cosy Christmas Day for the Howard family, cocooned by the roaring log fire and the Aga while the chilled sheep watched us enviously through the windows.
A big roast dinner makes sense in that kind of weather. I successfully roasted vegetables and potato gratin, and steamed the pudding, in the aga - but the turkey, self basting in it's protective plastic film, stayed in the 21st century oven.
Santa did manage to find us (unlike many other delivery men in the past few weeks) and left a new scooter for Dylan and a Lightning McQueen ride-on car for Sam. It took us most of the day to unwrap, and put batteries into, the mountain of toys under the tree - I think we may have over-compensated for dragging them away from their family and friends!
New Years Eve was a much more low-key affair - like most of the UK, we did not venture into the gale-force winds outside, and a variety of nasty illnesses kept both Jason and I away from even a tiny glass of champagne. We celebrated feeling better in 2007 with a walk around the delightful village of Milford, in the heart of the Peak District national park, where we fed the ducks and watched the shivering ramblers queue outside a villagers kitchen window for takeaway cups of tea. She was doing a roaring trade with her boiling kettle - where are those mobile cappucino vans when you need them?
Yesterday, Dylan and I had a special "date" at the local pantomime, Peter Pan. I had forgotten what a unqiuely English experience this - full scale tack-o-rama for the kids, with a mix of irrelevent song and dance numbers (Peter Pan ended with the cast singing 'Footloose', a Gloria Estefan number and something from Les Miserables also featured) and classic vaudeville slapstick. The requesite theatre 'legend', ex-boy band member and b-grade TV star were leading cast members. Even though the performance went on for over 2 hours, Dylan loved it, especially the silly pirates and their magic tricks. We celebrated his last night before school term with a meal at Little Frankie's, a pseudo-italian-american family restaurant in Derby.
While Dylan and I were at the theatre, Jason and Sam shopped 'til they dropped at Jason's new favourite store - Costco. What I will do with 60 pita breads, 24 tubes of tomato paste, a 3kg bag of basmati rice and 48 bottles of ginger ale is beyond me, but they both enjoyed themselves.
Hopefully 2007 will bring us some new friends, lots of adventures both here and abroad, and finally back home to Sydney - with a container load of all our new possessions (and possible some leftover tomato paste...)
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