Merry Christmas Everyone

I'm sorry I've not posted for a while, I've been working (even on Christmas Day) and so it's been a very busy, in fact busier than normal for busy at this time of year.



So here is Christmas, Henry's second with us, also Molly's second Christmas with us and Badgers first ever Christmas with anyone. At the begining of the week it hit me that I had an enormous amount of stuff to do before the big day. I always put myself under an immense amount of stress, trying to get the house impeccably clean, perfect and decorated as well as trying to get the garden nice and enough supplies and food in to last at least until March.



And it always goes wrong.



Or if not wrong then I usually have to give up on trying to get something done. This year for instance I wanted to finish plastering the front hall. It's still not finished and looks dreadfull as half of it is plastered and the other half is bad homemade artex with pink plaster adhesive all over it, looking like a very bad 90's paint effect. I;m sure no-one has noticed, although the guests we have coming this week for New Year may well notice it as I started it in November just before they last visited us.



Due to having so much to do I decided to double up on some tasks, walking the dogs is always a big chunk out of the day so I decided on Monday to out them in the boot of the car and walk them on the way to the the supermarket where I was going to do my food shopping. The supermarket is a 72 mile round trip away so the long journey would also help to tire them out and it worked a treat. We walked round the grounds of local castle where I decided that they should have a couple of herds of deer like in Knole in Kent, anyway the dogs really loved it, pulling me this way and that and lots of general excitement. They then snoozed in the car to Tescos and again on the way back.



As this plan worked well I decided to do the same on Tuesday as I needed to go out to buy coal and logs and also to replace a couple of Christmas presents that had been chewed by Badger. How he managed to get them was a mystery until I caught him climbing up on top of the dog food bin, from there on to the rubbish bin, from there onto the window sill and then on to the kitchen worktop. He is 13 weeks old and already learning Leaphound tricks!



Off we went round the castle again, then on to the saw mill which was closed Oh no!! Luckily they sell bags of logs in the Spar (can you beleive that!) so Christmas with a log fire was saved in the nick of time. I also managed to get the presents locally and then we went off to get the coal which had to go in the middle of my car as the dogs were in the boot. The only problem with that was that it left the small gaps in the dog guard exposed when I folded the seat down and that meant that Badger shot out through it and straight into the arms of the coal man who really loved him. We put him back in the boot only for him to crawl through five minutes later and sit on top of the sack of coal for the rest of the journey.



Then suddenly Christmas was here. It always creeps up on me like that after weeks of planning (and doing very little about the plans) and days of running around like a nutter. You'd think after all these years of having Christmas we'd be experts at it and be able to organise it without a second thought (or any thoughts at all) after all August Bank Holiday is a breeze, and even family holidays away are easy compared to this.