Our First Xmas

Xmas Day at the hospital. Not as miserable as we thought it would be. Not great, just not wrist-slashingly depressing. And this was due, for the most part, to Maggie being alert and sweet and lovely. It made it all seem a little better.

One of the oddest things about spending the day at the hospital was that we were hungry by early afternoon. I mean, who gets hungry on Xmas Day? So I nipped downstairs to the canteen and got a small takeaway box of turkey, stuffing and roast potatoes. Not much - just enough to keep us going until our proper Xmas dinner later in the evening.

So we spent the day at the hospital with our girls, opening presents and trying to make the best of it. As you’ll see from the photographs, they had some nice things between them. The majority of them courtesy of Auntie Mary and Uncle Bob, all the way from Texas.

A big thank you, by the way, to those of you who got gifts and cards for the girls.

In the evening, we left Maggie for the rest of our Xmas Day at home. Of course, it was dark by then and tinged with the sadness of her not being there. But with all that, I was greatly looking forward to our Xmas dinner. Not just because I like a good roast but because having turkey with all the trimmings was our attempt to have at least a bit of Xmas Day that was normal.

So you can imagine how upset I was when we discovered that our crappy frozen turkey thing couldn’t be cooked from frozen – that it had to be defrosted for 24 hours. Honestly, I almost cried. Just another little thing that didn’t go right.

But salvation of sorts came in the form of a crappy frozen gammon roast thing. And Shannon did an excellent job of putting together a very nice alternative Xmas dinner. Which we ate around 9pm while watching Celebrity Mr & Mrs and necking Buck’s Fizz.

All in all, not a great Xmas. But it’ll be different next year.

See the Xmas Day gallery by clicking the pic (now fixed):