Christmas and New Year 2008

We had a different style Christmas tree this year - I carried out my threat to put some tinsel on the palm tree in our lounge!!
Plans changed at the last minute and in place of a bottle of bubbly on the beach with a Christmas picnic we decided on enjoying a traditional roast turkey dinner at the local country club. Pre-lunch drinks in front of a lovely coal fire, delicious roast turkey lunch (Spanish style!) followed by chocolate log. Very much a party atmosphere - we even had a party bag each with silly hats, hooters, balloons, streamers - we all had fun with those! We were entertained by a singer/comedian then it was onto the dance floor! We finally arrived back home mid evening. A thoroughly enjoyable time and certainly a very different Christmas day to our usual family time. Boxing Day dawned beautifully sunny and warm so we blew away the cobwebs with a long walk along the sandy beach.

We joined our Spanish teacher, Meshe, her partner Mike and some friends at the local driving range club house to celebrate the New Year. There were double celebrations as we celebrated at midnight Spanish time then an hour later midnight British time - so a double serving of bubbly! We followed the 'Doce Uves' Spanish custom: before midnight each person is given12 grapes. As the clock strikes midnight you start eating the grapes - each grape eaten is believed to give you a month of good luck in the new year so the aim is to have eaten all the grapes by the 12th chime of the clock! However, ours were the large, tough skinned seeded version so the more we stuffed into our mouths the funnier it got which didn't leave us any chance of finishing the 12!! I'd be interested to know if anyone has ever managed to achieve this!! It was a fun night and certainly different!
4 a.m. before we finally fell into bed so a very lazy start to 2009!!

1st Jan dawned bright, sunny and warm so when we did emerge we only had to shift from horizontal in bed to horizontal on the sun beds on the terrace!! Packing tomorrow for the move to the house in El Higueral.....