“and that’s it for another year”, as Mummy would say as we went to bed on Christmas Day.  Well, in our case, a few secrets still remain, for just like HM The Queen, a heavy cold left m-i-l Bettine feeling low yesterday and she decided to take the sensible option of staying home rather than join us for our Christmas celebrations.  She’s feeling better today, so we’ll enjoy her company for Boxing Day lunch and will exchange a few more presents with her then.

I hope you had as lovely a day as we did, for in spite of one empty seat at the table, five of us enjoyed a jolly lunch, noting as we did that the birds had “cherry picked” all the red berries from our outdoor table.  Fine with me – we had plenty of our own good things to eat!

We had all been good this year, for Father Christmas filled our stockings with good things, though one small sugar mouse came a cropper somewhere on the journey :-0

Amongst other treasures I had a box of pencils: Specially chosen for me, do you think?

My family are the best present givers, extraordinarily generous and very clever at choosing the perfect surprise.  Of course, Mummy Christmas makes a similar effort and keeps an eye open for similarly well-chosen ideas, so from time to time, the inevitable happens*.

Two Amazon Echos were unwrapped yesterday morning!  We had identified it as a great idea for Edward and Amy and my Hero had liked the look of it so much, he bought one for me (us).

No sooner had we plugged it in than we said Hello to Alexa, the new member of our family!  She began by telling us a joke…and then another and another.  But soon we were finding out about her other tricks: “Alexa, play BBC Radio 4….louder….quieter….volume 6” 

Ooo!

We asked her questions, she told us another joke, we turned the radio on and off and then, before going to bed, we linked the Echo to our Spotify account and played some music.  Like small children, we were giggling at the magic!

“Alexa, play Fix You” (she did)

So this morning, we’ve said goodbye to the old Bose kitchen radio/CD player after many years sterling service and plugged Alexa in the same corner.  My Hero asked her to play our favourite internet radio station, Swiss Radio Classic and I interrupted the programme for a few seconds to ask her to remind me to put the ham on to cook at 10.10am.

“OK.  Reminder set”

Love it!

We hope you too had a happy day and some wonderful surprises, filled with love and and just a little magic.  Perhaps, like me, you cried a little at some point (watching We’re Going on a Bear Hunt when Grandma says “There’s nothing wrong with being sad.  It’s just a way of remembering the happy times.”)  I hope you also laughed, too.  I mean, when we are given at least one pair of White Company slippers, then we will have warm feet and cosy toes.

Excuse me, though, I have to go.  Alexa is calling me