the day when christmas arrived (sort of)

this morning started with nearly two hours of skyping various friends back in the UK.  it was great to catch up and hear about the snow.

then it was off to church for our christmas service.  usual chaotic kiwi style, but the highlight for us was definitely Esther reading the first reading which she was fab at

and here’s our pastor leading the service wearing a rather fetching pixie hat.  they’re not big on ‘formal’ dress here.  And we thought our rector at our church in Reading was informal because he didn’t wear a dog collar !

this afternoon the girls and i went to a local tree place to buy an off the peg christmas tree.  there wasn’t anywhere we could find which allowed us to chop our own down, and we ended up not really having time to go tot he place where a man would chop one down as we watched.  something to work on for next year.

Instead this chap with a permed mullet (classic combo) carried the tree to our car.

their trees are more like fluffy bushes, although they still stink of pine which is amusing for those hayfever sufferers in the house (most of us).  decoration will happen tomorrow apparently.

this evening we had some friends round from church who live on the same road as us.  i had a great chat with the chap who has a similar love of Excel, and we spent hours (literally) talking about VLOOKUPs and computer forensics.  we had raclette which was good.

they’ve only just gone and it’s time for bed.  work for me tomorrow.  decs for everyone else i think.

(the two photos above to show you how our dining/living area works – imagine there’s a wall of windows/glass doors to the bottom and right of the pictures (because there are))