Looking very educated with Grandma Muz! …. and as giggly as ever with Granddad ..… and with Uncle Jimmy

Chloe in Christmas outfit .... but not sure she has quite managed this eating lark yet! Dianne and Malcolm, Nan-nan, Becky, James and Hannah went up to London for “Carols by Candlight” in the Albert Hall after a Christmas dinner cooked by Becky.Becky as enthusiastic as ever - and what about those cool glasses!

The girls put together a surprise present for big M. A blind wine tasting of 9 red wines ranging from crap to excellent! Becky looked quite knowledgable!I think James was just there for the beer!!Some took it quite seriously ..Guess who correctly identified the top wine as Hannah announces the results.... but guess who enjoyed it a little bit too much …

We went down to NYC for a pre-Christmas trip with Maureen (see BigCountryHouse.com for the extended selection of pics). Here we are posing at the hotel in our new Christmas hats from the Union Square Holiday Market…

Here we are posing with the tree at Rockefeller Center…

Here we are posing for Maureen on our way out to a wedding on Saturday night…

And here we are posing (sensing a theme here?) with a Father Christmas we found at the wedding reception…

Emma was barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen when she made these! And Baci was covered in flour by the time she was done (though his persistence in spending the afternoon under her feet was rewarded when one mince pie ended up on the kitchen floor).

Suzanne, John, and Emily arrived in Red Hook just in time for the biggest snowstorm we’ve seen in Red Hook yet. Here’s Suzanne and John posing by our back porch at the beginning of the storm, before it was treacherous just getting from the car to the house…

Emily and John…the snowflakes are getting bigger!

But despite that, we decided it was a good idea to get into the car and head into town. Note that John is using Baci’s ball-chucking toy to clear the windshield. We weren’t exactly prepared for the storm! And Emma seems to be doing a very good supervising the operation (her excuse: pregnancy plus she was wearing her trendy-but-useless fingerless gloves).

We made it to the diner… just!

But then abandoned any plans to go shopping and just headed home (at 5mph) to admire the icicles and cozy up around the fire.

By Friday the roads were clear enough for us to head for the mall, where Emily insisted that we pose in front of the huge mounds of snow:

And on Saturday night, we went out for dinner, where we just happened to bump into the Shavelles!

Come back soon, Woodies! We promise to have snow shoes by then…

Much to Hannah’s disappointment (she was the back-up ticket taker), Rachel was able to get away from breast-feeding long enough to join Bex at the Take That reunion concert…and just like that, they were transported back to their Matthew Arnold days!!

As Bex says, Mark Owen’s still got it!

And your wish is granted, Chloe! Her second wish? To look just like Auntie Bex, too… and we reckon she’s working on that one!

Shhhh… don’t tell Inspector Bunt. Her first bath with a boy, Henry Edwards…

Jessica comes over to join in the fun…

… but she struggles through it much more valiantly than any of the men in our family, despite a lack of soup. She even manages a smile!