Christmas and January

So Tom gave me an exciting camera for Christmas. This has lead to me
taking pictures of pretty much everything.

Christmas in France was interesting. It was my first Christmas away
from home, and my first Christmas without children running around. At
first I wasn't sure if I liked it, but by the end of the day I was
enjoying a whirl of cooking, eating and drinking nice wine like a
grown up. Tom's sister had been given a labrador puppy for Christmas,
and that kept everyone amused for hours, stealing napkins from laps to
shred, and demanding attention.

It had snowed a bit before we arrived, and so the countryside was a
sparkling crispy white for most of our stay. It was bitterly cold, and
when we went to watch the fireworks at a nearby village on Boxing Day
we were sooo cold!

Since we came back from France, apart from going back to work, we went
to a birthday party, a second Christmas with Tom's mum and family, to
an aquarium a new years party at Lula's and my family party, and off
to Gatwick for bowling and a meal for our Best Man's birthday. I had
such fun! Gatwick has had over a foot of snow and we had a great
snowball fight on the way back to the car!

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=7453900&id=286100391

January has mainly been snowy and icy even for us here in
Southampton's micro climate. The last few days have seen the snow turn
into thick layers of ice as the slush melted and frozen again. It is
only just melting now. All the time inside sheltering has seen us
working hard on the Chaplaincy campaign, as we work to get pledges
together for regular donations to the work of the Chaplaincy.

We have pledges of ??4050 a year in regular donations and ??380 in one
off donations in only a month. We reckon we need about ??10,000 to be
taken seriously by the University and the Church, so we're well on
track. About 1200 people signed the petition, and if each of those
gave just ??6 a year - A YEAR! will provide more than enough.

If you can help us, please go to http://www.savesotonchaplaincy.co.uk

Tom and I have also been planning weddingy things. Last night we were
looking at honeymoon plans, and we are going to be going to Ireland.
We'll fly from Southampton to Dublin, see some sights and then hire a
car and go on a bit of a tour. Nice and relaxing! i also made the
headresses for the bridesmaids. The big things on my to do list are:

getting fabric for the wedding dress and bridesmaids dresses
get underwear and hosiery
sort out wedding rings
sort out a meeting with the various clergy.