All things festive and a birthday too.

It's a tradition in the Carter house to have all the Christmas decorations up for James' birthday.

Even when James was away at University Dave and I would dash around like mad things to have everything up for the 10th. So last weekend was the big one, as far as getting into the festive spirit. Early Saturday morning we went off to Delamere forest to buy our tree. This is a very serious part of the build up, it takes a long time to find a tree that is just right. It must be big enough to fill the window but not too tall so that Dave has to do his lumberjack impersonations with the axe shortening the trunk so that the tree doesn't poke a hole in the ceiling.

It was a shame that the weather was so awful on Saturday, we were drenched as soon as we got out of the car, and looked like drowned rats by the time we had chosen just the right tree. But Dave proved to be excellent at modeling the trees and didn't swear at us too much when James and I kept asking him to lift the trees out of their little holes in the ground so that we could see them properly then and then turn them through 360 degrees to make sure that they looked good from all angles. I helped to lug the chosen tree back to the car (honestly) and ended up looking like a sodden little gnome in the back of the car wedged between the door and half a ton of woodland!

Later after a reviving snack of hot chocolate and warm mince pies we set to decorating the house, great fun. It seems to take longer and longer every year but I hope that you think it was worth it...we do, the house looks lovely and I can't wait for Lesley to come home and see it.

On the Christmas/Birthday theme, James had the day off yesterday so we went through to the Christmas markets in Manchester. It was the perfect day for wandering around the streets looking at all the lovely stalls, dry and bright but cold, perfect. We warmed up with Irish coffee in the German Market and had a really calorific lunch of spicy bratwurst before looking at every stall in each different market...not sure if it was quite what James had in mind when I suggested that we could go to 'have a look at the markets' but I had a lovely time and we did take a break from all the shopping to warm up in a lovely pub just by the Arndale Centre, so I think I was forgiven.