December was a BUSY one but was full of joy and excitement throughout. Starting with my completing a Harry Potter baby blanket for one of Tony’s friends whose baby may or may not have been born in August… Whilst the pattern repeat was not perfect, I was very pleased with how it came out.

First exciting trip of the month was to see Hans Zimmer and his amazing mirror ball floating lady. Hans himself is pretty out there and he spent a lot more time chatting to the crowd than expected. He played all the big hits with some really exciting twists, Pirates, Interstellar, Gladiator, Dune. He also had some very amazing musicians on the stage who wore some very exciting outfits, including a red dress on the cellist or double bassist I am unsure that covered almost the entire stage for no apparent reason.

Pie. Yummy.

Tony organised a wonderful surprise trip for us to Épernay in France to see the habits de lumière which is a festival celebrating the champagne houses in the region. There were fireworks, light shows and each of the champagne houses put on a disco for people to drink and dance the night away.

We stayed at a wonderful hotel that had the most amazing balconies with views of the champagne countryside although we can’t attest to that as such, it was quite foggy most of the time. There was also the most incredible bath which meant that I got to have tea and reading in the bath several mornings in a row.

We went on an incredible tour of the Moet & Chandon / Dom Perignon wine cellars and learnt all about their history as a champagne house and how they make their products.

We discovered that Emperor Napoleon had walked these cellars which was a cool and surreal piece of history.

We have many silly photos of us posing with champagne bottles… probably best that I don’t put them all on the internet…

Ok, just one more… yes we are pretending its a baby, yes we had already drunk most of it at this point…

As it is December, or it was… I realise I am writing this in January… it is very important that we say a very Happy Birthday to Kathryn. Who in 2025 decided that she was going to become a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan. As you can see in the above photo where she is sporting all the merch possibly the best part of being an NFL fan. Whilst, sadly, the Buccs didn’t make it to the play offs (playoffs) we still had an awesome time cheering them on. The Giants were a lost cause many weeks ago…

Vesper in her Christmas Pud bed. This has sadly gone away with the Christmas decks and she was very sad.

Christmas dinner, complete with novelty light up ice we got at Disneyworld.

Matching jumpers. There was in fact, cheeses for us meeces this year.

A final round of festive fun on New Years Eve! Always better with friends… and champagne!!

Happy New Year to all!