After all our excitement on Friday night, we decided to take things easy on Saturday. After spending the morning with the police, we went to Oriel for brunch then headed out to the Kings Road to do a little pre-Christmas shopping. Later in the afternoon, we met up with Aude’s brother, Jerome, and grabbed the train back to Canterbury where we had a quiet dinner at our place.

Now that Thanksgiving is behind us, we took the opportunity to put the tree up on Sunday and invited a few friends around to help us decorate it. The cats did their best to help out as well, Calypso supervising from the corner while Daisy jumped right in the middle of things. She spent her day alternatively sleeping in the box of decorations and being pissed off with Jerome (why, we’ll never know).

Mulled wine, Christmas carols on the stereo, and a fire burning away on the TV (hey, these are modern times and I don’t have a fireplace) – just what we needed to get into the Christmas spirit. Just a reminder: three weeks until Christmas!

Matthew and Jerome begin the annual “struggle of the lights” as we try to get the strings around the tree. Note the concentration on our faces…

A crowd of onlookers come to cheer us on!

Not quite like Christmas past – this year it’s all about “Fireplace: The Movie”

Is it just me, or are Anne-Laure and Neil kissing in every photo of them I take?

Is there anyone more excited about Christmas than MG? I doubt it!

MG hangs an ornament on the tree

Aude joins in the fun

Since Jerome’s mother claims that the only updates she gets about her son come from my blog, we’ve decided to start photographing him ‘ransom-style’ with a current newspaper to prove that he is, in fact, still alive.