Happy Thanksgiving!
It has been a busy few weeks since I last sat down at the computer (I have been working though!!!)
DH and I went away for the weekend following our 25th, Eldest looked after Youngest for us, and we went back and visited all our favourite places from when we were first together!
One of our favouite places is Chatsworth House and ever since the foot and mouth outbreak a few years ago they have been keeping the house open until Christmas and the lower floors are decorated with a theme. This year it is “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” by C.S. Lewis, one of my top books as a child. Each room has an extremely large Christmas tree decorated in a different colour.
The Chapel
Each area has a scene from the book
The White Witch’s Hall
Aslan the Lion in the Library. The picture does not do it justice as he was breathing and the mice are untying the ropes!
The State Dining Room set for dinner
We had a lovely day, it was really cold and frosty, great for walking. We then drove to Nottingham and stayed at Harts Hotel in the city centre.
This is a favourite of ours and where we went for Eldest’s 18th Birthday dinner. We were going to go out to the cinema on the Friday evening, but as happens with us always, there was nothing on we wanted to see!! So we stayed in and had room service!!!!
Saturday we spent the day Christmas shopping and it was great to be able to walk around without a time limit or two Boys wanting to go here, there and everywhere, whilst we got nothing done! In the evening we went for dinner at their Restaurant, across the courtyard.
The food was amazing as always and when we had coffee this is what they brought out
This is the view we had from our room at night
On the Sunday both Boys were swimming in the County Sprints Competition at Pond’s Forge, Sheffield and they didn’t think we would be there, but we decided we would go and surprise them. As with most swimming competitions warm up was 8.00am to start at 9.00am so we had to get up ridiculously early to drive up there and get a parking space so we were there when they arrived!
It was a great day with Youngest getting PB’s in all his races and Eldest getting a fourth place and a bronze medal for his last 50m Free race.
By Sunday evening we were all tired but it was a memorable weekend.
The following week and this week have been spent in a haze of work and activities with the Boys. Youngest had a dental appointment for his braces and then a hospital appointment for his toes. Eldest has been busy with course work for his two further A’Levels. We also ran our second Club Championships, again both of our Boys doing well, except for I was doing the timings with Girlfriend and the computer system crashed!!!! That was fun!!!! We then had to enter all the times manually but we managed to catch up and then finish on time!
Jayne and I went Christmas shopping again, in Nottingham, and I bought more than she did! The day did not start too well as there are a lot of roadworks in Nottingham at the moment so I knew we would be stuck in traffic but on my way to collect Jayne there was a huge queue because of some emergency work! So a journey which takes ten minutes from my house to Jayne’s took three quarters of an hour! Anyway we had a lovely day, lunch and afternoon tea included, and the weather was again kind to us being sunny and cold.
This weekend is going to again be a Christmasey one as tomorrow night we are writing Christmas cards, Saturday we will be getting our tree to decorate on Sunday and Saturday evening DH and I are out at one of the companies we work with, their Christmas dinner! Can’t wait.
Monday is Youngest’s 14th Birthday!!! Where have the years gone? I will show you pictures next week.
I also have lots of quilting to do but there really are not enough hours in the day. We haven’t been over to see Evalyn since, as both Boys have had bad colds and we were not going to inflict that on them just before Christmas!
So to everyone celebrating Thanksgiving have a great day. I am Thankful for DH, Our Boys and Treacle. I hope that everyone affected by the storms in the US are safe and enjoy the day.
