Christmas started this year with a trip to the Bastille Opera in Paris to see the Nutcracker ballet on December 5 with Nick and Katie.

The Christmas season was also the real 'opening' of our new extension room, with the first use of the new fireplace, the first time taking advantage of the very high ceiling (the Christmas tree was 3m (approx. 10 feet) tall), and the completion of the painting of the chimney, among other things. We put the tree up on the 8th of December and celebrated with the first fire in the new fireplace that evening.

The real fun began on the 24th when we went into Paris to buy a new, totally awesome, LCD TV. It has the very latest HD technology and the image is so perfect it seems to be too perfect... Seriously. Kate cooked up a Christmas Eve masterpiece for dinner and we went to bed having placed the Christmas stockings by the fireplace for Santa to find.

We awoke Christmas day to find Santa had left lots of stuff, in addition to all of the presents we had given to each other. Christmas day began with just Kevin, Kate, Audrey, Alexandre and Andreas as Nick and Katie started the day at their Mother's. We opened presents from Santa in the morning and then opened all of the rest of the presents when Nick and Katie joined us after lunch. We finished the day in great spirits with another awesome meal and smiles all around as we prepared to head to La Plagne in a few days.