Dinner with the family!

I actually managed a lie-in until 7.50am this morning and it was lovely to have a lazy start to the day. I used my new leaf vacuum machine at the front of the house and it dealt with the leaves effortlessly! It's brilliant. It mulched them all up so all I had to do was empty the bag and put them into the compost bin.

I was out in the garden for a good while as the weather, although a bit cold, was lovely and sunny. It was fab to see the blue skies and sunshine after yesterday's murk!

At midday Sophie and I went to Jones's to get Christmas cards, wrapping paper and chocolates for Mum tonight - we're all off to their house for a meal. We also bought a couple of decorations to add to the trees. It won't be long now before we'll be getting them down from the garage rafters!

After Jones's we drove to Wyevale where we had a coffee and some lunch, and had a look at their decorations, which were a bit disappointing to be honest. In years past, they have arranged them by colour but they weren't that good this year at all! The place was actually quite disorganised, I thought, with a lot of tat crammed in all over the place!

We then walked over to Waitrose and I managed to spend £23 on two bottles of non-alcoholic wine (one for tonight, one for tomorrow) and a bottle of Rioja for my Dad. Oh, and I also bought some chipolatas wrapped in bacon for tomorrow night's turkey dinner! Waitrose have lovely food but it is so expensive!

We returned home in the beautiful dusk and had a nap before getting ready to go out to Mum's house in the evening. The house was beautiful and welcoming and we sat in the living room while my parents put the finishing touches to their dinner. We enjoyed prawns and scallops lightly fried in a garlic butter served with salad followed by tender pulled pork, mashed potatoes and vegetables. As usual the children kept us all entertained, especially as Mike did his usual trick of recording us all!

Dessert was cheesecake and we had to say no to the cheeseboard as we were all too full. Sophie, Keith and I drank non-alcoholic beverages while Mike, lucky thing, had a couple of beers. Mum and Dad had a DVD of Boz Scaggs playing in the background which was lovely and the music brought back lots of good memories. Cheers!