Merry Christmas

So much snow! And yet a warm, not-at-all-white Christmas.

I picked up soph from heathrow as the snow started coming down. Less than half an hour later we were in gridlock, watching the snow build up between the cars, wondering what the chances were of getting home that night or if we would be camping in the car. As we trickled along Soph and I, as true Aussies, were suitably over excited and would sit with the windows down, catching snow on our tongues, taking photos of the snow, and generally not looking annoyed. In 2 hours we went about two miles. And then we hit a hill, which meant that slush puddles formed in front of the tyres every time we stopped, and everytime the big white van in front of us stopped, making for some fun/worrying fish-tailing every time we restarted. But gradually we started to move, at which stage it started snowing again after having eased off for a while. We were almost anti-snow by this stage, but we managed to get home safely so all was ok.

We had a relatively quiet Christmas day with Soph, Nilu and Jaffa. After over eating, we took Jaff for a walk to the river in the cold, where the cygnets decided they didn't like him and started squawking. Crazy swans. And since then we have had a few days up in the Wye Valley doing pretty much nothing since everything was shut (that's Hereford Cathedral in the photo). We do seem to spend too many holidays looking for what is open. Although we did find this shop. And we had a day inside, playing settlers, avoiding the freezing fog, which is always fun.

Happy New Year.