Hi all!

Christmas was a bit strange this year, due to illness.  Kelly was ill 2 weekends before Christmas, then I got ill at the end of the same week and ended up being off work for the whole of the week before Christmas week.  I then started to get better but managed to catch a really heavy cold on Christmas Eve so was ill all over the Christmas period.  And when I started to get better, Kelly got ill again, so was a bit of a nightmare, especially as it was Ben’s 1st Christmas.

However, we managed to get through it all and had some good times.

The Saturday before Christmas Day, Kellys parent came up to babysit Ben whilst we went out to watch Christmas with The Rat Pack at the Pavilions, which turned out to be very good.  We had a meal in the Sippers pub (next to the Pavilions) before hand, and then popped in for a drink again after.

The next day we ended up going to Trago Mills at Newton Abbott to do a bit of Christmas shopping with Kelly’s parents.  Was a fun day out and had a very nice Pasty.  Managed to get a few more Xmas presents as well, just to finish it all off.

Christmas Eve we went over to my Mum’s house for Roast Pork in the evening, which was very tasty.  Unfortunately, this was when I started to get ill again.  The car also started to play up as the Eco-Diagnostics light turned itself on, so I had to check the oil and water in the dark and freezing cold, which is not what I was wanting to do!  Thank goodness that it seemed to sort itself out in the end!

Christmas Day was when I started to feel really awful and ended up going to bed during the afternoon.  It was a very different Christmas this year, as it was Ben’s 1st.  So our usual timing for opening presents, cooking dinner etc was all out and we had to do it all on the fly!  We ended up getting up at 7am to start opening our presents and we didn’t finish until the afternoon as we obviously had to sort Ben out every now and again (feeding, washing, changing, etc) and also getting the Roast Turkey cooked.  We all had a good array of presents, and Ben actually had more than either of us.  He is a very lucky boy!  My presents included a Technic Lego set, clothes, books, DVD’s, Finger Drum Kit, Canvas Print (which is excellent!), chocolate, alcohol, a Transformer, and much more.  Kelly had items such as a new Jacket, a jogging outfit, more clothes, DVD’s, chocolate, cook book, CD’s and more as well.  Ben has mostly clothes as he was too young for toys really, but he did get a Walker, a Travel Cot, a Money Box, numerous cuddly toys (which are all lovely and soft!) and a Tumble Time Tigger.  All in all the day went well apart from me not feeling very good.  The food was lovely and Kelly did an excellent job cooking it (though I did help a bit of course!).

Boxing Day we went down to my Dad’s and had more presents.  I was feeling pretty awful again, and we ended up stopping in Tesco on the way down to get some medicine and tissues for me.  We had to wait for Darren (Brother) and Marina (Sister in Law) to arrive as they were quite late.  We opened our presents and then nipped to the pub for a game of Pool.  It was Ben’s 1st time in a Pub and we only took him because we knew it was going to be dead in there.  He slept through it all in the end. 😉  Pool-wise, I beat Darren twice and Dad once and then he beat me in the final game as I potted the white when I potted the black, so he was very lucky!  During the afternoon I had to go to bed as I was just feeling so awful, but did manage to perk up again in the evening for a game of cards.

Although we both were suffering from illness, we had a pretty good 1st Christmas with Ben. 😉