Boxing Day: did someone say penguin?

Got up and going fairly early for a day up at my folks, with the added delights of the Nuts and my brother and Nana due to be in attendance. Big Nut, Serious Nut (sorry, did you say that’s not your name?) and Little Nuts all very delightful, brother looking tanned and delicious after several weeks in Australia and San Francisco (being an academic is all toil!) and parents on top form as ever.

Kids absolutely lovely and revelled in the company – i didn’t even hear mention of presents at all which spoke volumes to me about them having a very sensible and sturdy attitude to what it should be about – proud of them. Well, mostly, not quite so proud of Josie, who told Rowan she didn’t like her (!) – must beat her more soundly in future. Josie has it in her to be a royal ratbag at times and the relationship between those two is tricky at best, but gradually beginning to come right, i think (hope!)

Had a delicious buffet lunch (much my favourite type) and loads of chatting before the rather dramatic arrival of my Nana, who managed to arrive, get out of her car, leave the handbrake off without noticing, get half back in the car to retrieve something and set it rolling so that it pitched her to the ground, smacking both legs with the car door and only just missing her head before coming to a stop just shy of the mouth of the drive, which is directly on to a main road. 😯 Poor Nana; amazingly, she got into the car, dorve it back up the drive and parked it before hooting for help. Terrible shock for her and worrying to see her so hurt and upset.

As my sister said to her, we’d have given her sherry for the asking, there was no need to go making a scene! 😉

Went over to visit her yesterday and am a) amazed at her bruises and b) amazed at her constitution as frankly i’d have taken to my bed and royally sulked while demanding to be waited on. Get well soon Nana.

Despite that, we had a lovely day, particularly liking the sudden deluge of frozen carrots on to the sofa from Nana’s cold compress… it was a least better than pea-ing on the sofa 😉

Mum and Dad gave the girls science kits; chemistry for Fran (she adores it) a volcano for Maddy (she has loved doing it) and electronics for Amelie – perfect in every way. Josie had a variety of books, jigsaws and things and was delighted. Really appreciated mum and dad taking us at our word and getting stuff like that rather than toys. Uncle Rich and Auntie Greer had provided a veritable heap of Game vouchers (which we have already spent!) and penguin related gifts for Josie as aforementioned.

Highlight of Xmas for us was 4 portraits done by BN the Brushfires wunderkid which we absolutely adore. He’d taken 4 pictures from the blog/flickr that he thought most captured each child and done pencil sketches of each of them and they are just beautiful. I’m most embarrassed that because i saw Amelie’s before Maddy’s i briefly thought the AMelie one was of Moo so hasten to say, BN,that this has absolutely more to do with my kids’ cloniness than your drawing; you captured each of them perfectly and we love the drawings to bits. As soon as the light is decent, i will do photos of them. Thank you, thank you, thank you – i hope our present to you will enable you to get further along on the path to making as much money from your talent as you deserve to.

Came home late, as we felt Maddy needed to get back to normality (although a cuddle from my dad had done much restorative work) and also because we had J&L to visit with their girls the next day.