And that's that.

Everyone departed today. Sadly because it snowed last night and this morning, my boys decided that it would be best for them to go too and not to chance the bus but take the train. So my Beloved took everyone off to Berwick station. My mother to go south to London and the boys to go north to Edinburgh. The house is awfully quiet already.

Anyway, I survived!

It was the first visit from my mother for 11 years, and the first xmas visit ever I think. It's one I've pretty much avoided as when I was a child my xmases were awful and punctuated by bad moods and arguments. Still she's 87 and so I thought it would be good to have her here, but of course as she comes from London there'd be no way she could come for the day, so 4 days it was.

I did a lot of disappearing into the kitchen to cook (sometimes it was a bit more Gordon than Nigella) - I noticed No. 2 son accompanied me quite a bit, while my Beloved seemed to have had a lot of work on his computer to do and No. 1 son could be found doing quite a lot of reading. But the Wii was a godsend. She'd never played one before, and apart from one disastrous moment when she smacked her hand off one of our wooden posts in a moment of competitive madness, she absolutely loved it. She also loved the board games and card games we played. And of course the wine helped! She declared it the best Christmas ever and is determined to do it again! Next year it's my brother's turn. Phew!

I'm sad to see the boys go. I felt because my mother was here I never got the chance to spend as much time with them as I would've liked, but never mind. It was lovely to see them, and even though it was more stressful than usual, I think they had fun. They certainly helped me through it all.

So now my Beloved and I are on our own. Only for a day tho as we have friends coming tomorrow night and then we're off to Shirley and Andy's for our annual get together, which we're greatly looking forward to.

But for the rest of today... it's time out. Films to watch, food to eat, wine to be consumed... sounds like Xmas to me!