A Spanish Christmas

Christmas started with our friends knocking on the door and wondering why weren't at the dinner that we'd been invited to...'but it's not Christmas!' Whoops! We were running a day late...Christmas dinner is on the 24th here. Anyway after getting the boys up again and shod then whipping up a quick entree and desert ( as promised) we dashed down the road and were shortly tucking into some rum cocktails (of Cuban origin). As they say 'no pasa nada'... it doesn't matter here in Andalucia.

The pièce de résistance was a suckling pig, some may have been put off by the tiny cryovac'd pig, pink and perfect in the foetal position, but 2 hours in the oven and the transmogrification was complete! It's uncanny.

Oink!

A fine meal with great company and nice wine, maybe too much of the latter as there was dull pain for the Christmas early wakeup. The combination of kids and presents doesn't seem to lend itself to sleepins - should know that by now. We have a little tree, slightly frumpy as compared to our plastic $20 flashin' good guys jobbie back home, but it was real - harvested on a sneaky run up a canyon near our house. Angus and Archie made some decorations de casero and in the end it looked pretty christmassy.

Archie wasn't too flash as he had spend the previous night with his head in a basin but promise of an excavadora will drag even the sickest from their bed.

BEST of all we got to throw some snowballs. The snow in the mountains just behind us had come down low enough so we all piled into the car and headed up. We had sort of promised the boys snow at Christmas and it felt good to deliver. As we meandered into the pine forests there was great excitement in the back seat as we firstly saw small patches of snow, ever increasing until we hit solid white at the end of the road. Eat your heart out Bing!

So with Christmas out of the way we are straight into little Arch's 3rd birthday. We are all excited and when we asked him what he wanted to eat it was PORK (and a white cake with pink icing) and where does he want to go....the SNOW!
Groundhog day.