Happy Holidays

Well...
Forgive me Father for I have sinned... it's been a month since my last blog.. proper.
Well I've been trying to catch up with family time and play games and relax, so the though of sifting through all of our pictures and blogging for an hour or so just didn't enter the equation over the past few weeks.
But tonight I've got a bit of time so here's how our holiday's went...

Christmas day was the best ever to be honest. It was just me, Kath, Hayden and Taryn, there was no rush, no need to get anything ready for family dinner, just our pace - dictated mostly by Hayden.
It took most of the morning for him to pen his absolute TON of present 80% of what you saw under the tree in my Xmas Eve post was his!

We played a lot, his favourite toy being a Lego Grievous figure and then we put a load of Lego Indiana Jones stuff together.
His main present from us was Lego Rock Band + Rock band 2 instruments... which is is still yet to really play - but more on that later :)
Taryn got the special edition Blu-Ray and DVD combo Snow White with a bunch of dwarfs which she seemed to like....



We had a Full English breakfast with proper bacon, black pudding and hash browns and a turkey dinner.
They don't do mince pies in Canada. But thankfully Kath was able to find the minced... stuff... that goes in them... in the meat section of the supermarket?!? and made some herself - they were lush!


Most of the day was spent playing with Hayden's toys, but I got Forza 3, and on Boxing Day Matt came round for some races, and we had Mel and Dave over for some drinks and bites.


Between Xmas and New Year..... well now this is normally the rubbish part of the holidays for us. You see if we spend xmas at home, in Harlow, then we have to travel to Plymouth or Norfolk for New Year. Or vice versa. Suffice it to say however that EVERY year involves travelling which pretty much takes up 2 days of the holiday, and then all the unpacking and stuff, and then straight back to work.
I hate it!.
I love seeing everybody, especially friends and cousins (well Kath's cousins normally) at New Year, but the whole travelling and wasted time really shortens what little holiday there is.
But this year with nobody to have to drive across the country to see, we were able to just play with our toys, watch our Xmas DVDs, and have friends over for coffee and games. It made the whole thing feel much longer and much more in the spirit of things. Plenty of left over food - which actually got eaten this year rather than binned because it's 5 days out of date.
And also we got to host the New Year party this year.
Taryn wore her best dress for the occasion.

New Years eve saw a huge falling of snow and so I was able to make a decent 'snow' bucket to keep the beers cold. As it was like -5, it was fine to keep the other beers outside - but not for long.

Normally if we host a party we can rely on our friends and family in the UK to turn up and we always have a house full and a good time... well until somebody has a fight that is.

And so this year we really weren't sure how well our party would go with just the friends we have made during the year, as nobody had really committed to come.

But to our surprise loads of people turned up and brought a ton of alcohol and nosh. And in true Canadian fashion some just turned up having seen Kath's offer up on Facebook.

Much partying was done.

Lego Rock Band being the favourite for the night.

At midnight we went outside for cigars, sparklers and a snowball fight. Hayden was still up and me and Sawler gored him into a big snow pile :)

After that, more games - Cranium, ensued. As everybody was way too mashed to understand or care how to play, this soon turned into drinking Cranium, whereby only drawing and play dough was used. Losers drank two fingers :)

The obligatory punch was made, and I found a noble substitute for Libby's Umbungo at the superstore. Asti Martini was found, along with every other ingredient ensuring that people would end up dying.

And they did...

I found these two at about 3am downstairs when I went looking for my Port - god only knows how gravity was holding Bob up!

And I found this other cheeky couple in MY bed!!!

Because of the lack of cabs the last of the hardcore (I have to say who were the English - yay) left at 4:30am. It was great, and the lack of any of my dumb ass nephews meant that there were no fights and no drama. It was a really nice night, full of fun and we were really chuffed to have such a good crowd here in PEI to celebrate the New Year with. Wish my boys could have been here also - hopefully next year eh guys?