The build up to Christmas... relaxing and quiet? Not a chance. It seems everyone uses the last few days before Christmas to make up for, well, anything really that involves drinking Christmas. To start off the Christmas festive period on Wednesday, I met up with Uns for our Christmas dinner since she was heading over to Ireland for ten or so days, so we decided on Wednesday evening for a pre Christmas drink and dinner at home.

Then on Thursday it was down to the Railway in Putters and met up with Luke, Martin and Al, and later by Katie. It was just a few beers with them there and a catch up really. Friday was my last day of work, having booked off the few days between Christmas and New Years, so a few of us decided to head to the Swan for a few 'break up' beers before our end of year holidays.

On Saturday it was off to the Queen Adelaide for lunch with Luke, Si, Loz, Tom and Katie before they headed down south to Tom's mom for Christmas. After lunch we popped over to the Normanby for an afternoon and evening of pool and sundowners. To keep up the Christmas Eve tradition from a couple of years ago, it was up to the Railway for a rum there followed by a kebab. The classic Christmas evening kebab. Except Mashawi was closed for some unknown reason, so Kebab King had to suffice.

Sunday was Christmas and this year it was going to be at ours - an FTG Christmas. We were up fairly early for presents and to prep the house before the masses stared to arrive. However, just before we were expecting the first of the crew to arrive we had a sudden panic in the house when the oven decided to stop working! No matter what we tried and which fuses we checked, it all looked OK and nothing obvious seemed to be the problem! Time to panic. Or just call on Seamus. Luckily he lived just down the road, lives by himself, wasn't away for Christmas and was coming to ours anyway. Lifesaver! So off we ran down the road with our trays of uncooked turkey and chickens to make full use of his brand new oven. He had only moved in a couple of days earlier so the timing was absolutely perfect for us. Not so much him, especially if he wanted to be the first to use the oven :)

Once that panic was oven and the troops started to arrive, everyone chilled out knowing that we'd have some food with our Christmas beers and drinks. There were about 13 of us there for the day and it turned into a great success after the morning's disaster. By the end of the night it had all turned rather messy and taken a fairly steep turn downhill :) Not quite like the Christmas I'm used to, but definitely good fun. And I think that goes for everyone who was there on Sunday!

Yesterday was a slow day to start off with. The thought of getting up wasn't a pleasant one. But once up, showered and heading over to Wimbledon, it didn't seem all that bad. The Rayners had organised a Boxing Day meet up at The Dog and Fox in Wimbledon Village for lunch, so a few of us made our way over there to meet up with them. It was a fairly tame afternoon and spent the rest of yesterday and all of today just chilling out at home.

So definitely a good few festive days to build up to Christmas, and then a few relaxing days to relax after the Christmas festivities, and the best thing is there's no work until the New Year... gotta love Christmas holidays!