I forget where Finn and I were, but Cori and Orry were around to see the lights turn on, with fireworks, which was rather exciting!
Also very beautiful was the sun over the south which I saw the day after, when I was off filming on a Sunday for work (for this nice film):
What a lovely island place we live in...
And this was also shown the week following when this happened...
As an island where it is, snow is fairly rare on the Isle of Man. Finn might be a teenager the next time he sees this much snow like this here, so it really is a very exciting thing when it comes.
It had been predicted, so many had been bracing themselves, so we were somewhat disappointed when we woke up to discover only a fine dusting of snow here and there in Peel. However, schools were declared closed (they were all declared closed, regardless of whether the particular school was with or without snow), so Finn and Orry remained at home as I went off to work (where I took those pictures of St. John's). When I sent these pictures to Cori, she wrapped them up and came to join us - as they had merely been playing in the kitchen with what she had miserably gathered from the Peel streets, which wasn't much!
It was odd to drive the five minutes from Peel and find yourself in a lovely snowy land! I packed up my work and went out to join them for a very cold and lovely time in the snow:
It was a lovely day for us all, and especially lovely to have my work just over the road, so that we could all rush in to warm up a bit before getting back in the car to go home again. Films on the couch and hot chocolate was what awaited everyone at home - a perfect day!
December also brought a series of other new delights for the boys:
Some new Playdough cutter things which came from Orry's birthday, perfect for making a playdough feast (lunch for the Queen apparently!).
... The return of mince pies, which Finn and I were very excited about. (However, Orry couldn't have them because of the milk in the ingredients, so he and Cori (who hates them) went for apple pies):
(The addition to the picture is a Crime Scene Reconstruction, with the Mooinjer Veggey sneaking in to steal a mince pie - which was the only possible explanation I could offer for a mince pie going missing between their going to bed and getting up again in the morning!)
Also, rather startlingly, Granny surprised us with a trampoline for the house (which she'd found in the tip). The boys were delighted:
The trampoline also acted as an excellent wall for a den:
The den is a bit silly, so here is something else silly:
Orry and Finn having fun to Cori's sung version of a favourite book of ours (which Cori regretted having made up after Orry was asking for it on repeat!):
Also silly is Orry deciding that he absolutely needed to take the pirate baby out with him in a pushchair when off on an errand, when on the narrowest bit of the pavement down Michael Street:
Inevitably Orry has more silliness, such as deciding that he needs to wear his coat backwards, much to amusement of anyone we meet on the street:
Undoubtedly very silly is the habit Finn & Orry have recently taken up of organising the chairs in front of the mirror in the spare room so that they can sit there and present the news to themselves. They do this by themselves, without anyone else as audience - we just listen in and sneak the occasional peek of them, when we find them generally like this:
You'll perhaps have noted that Orry went through a haircut transition here. We are always shocked at how young-boyish he looks with his hair cut:
Of course, December was dominated by Christmas and all of its run-in. This, of course, includes Finn's school Christmas show in the church, which looked a bit like this:
That's the best we did on the pictures, but Finn recapped some of the show, so you can get an idea of what it was all about:
Another of the markers of the approach of Christmas this year was going on the Santa train at Groudle (our first trip on the train there). Everyone enjoyed the train immensely, perhaps especially Orry, who smiled gleefully throughout, until the whistle went off and startled him. Everyone was somewhat wary of Father Christmas, but delighted by the presents they received!
Another marker of the approach of Christmas is the arrival of the Ice Skating rink at Tynwald Mills. This year Orry went separately to Finn, as he went with Cori during school hours to an under-5s session, where double skates were used, or just shoes if they like, they put out all the penguins (that kids hold onto the help stay on their feet when skating), piles of ice and buckets and spades and sledges etc. Orry loved it:
I went with Finn a week or so after, when his granddad & gran were over, and they brought the cousins up for a skate. You get a picture of the cousins, because I was on the ice all the time Finn was, holding up and ensuring that he didn't make good on his evident brimming confidence and trying and leave his penguin or the side alone and set off into on his own. He was very good, and learnt very quickly, but not that quickly!
After the skating, granddad, gran and the cousins came round for a fish & chip dinner, which was lovely. However, the tail end of it was somewhat dominated by the older generation, perhaps , naively, encouraging Finn to lead the group in a discussion of possible plans to escape from prison. This led to a very long discussion with Finn organising everyone to scribe down, help suggest or else just listen to his ideas. Here is the list of titles of the escapes, should anyone find themselves in a prison and need of ways to get out:
Also with the approach of Christmas, Cori used the opportunity to finally cast out the old moots sob!
The imminent heap of presents and the need to get organised to get stuff done in time prompted Cori to finally get around to her long-planned task of re-making Finn's old crocodile scarf which went missing last year. Orry got one too - a dragon. They were very happy:
This is probably long enough as it is, without adding to it the flurry of Christmas Day stuff. So perhaps we'll leave it here, with just a bit more silliness, coming out of a silly picture filter which Cori discovered on her phone which the boys enjoyed greatly!
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