Felicitations

Well the turkey and veg are well and truly purchased, a mixture of farm shop veg and Sainsbury's meat. I've bought Livi some Archers and Vaughan may have a beer with me. Adam is still too young although he may help with a little bit of the sloe gin as he helped to pick the sloes. I know he won't like it. "And wine for the lady sir?" Yes we have rose and red, oh and a little port for later. We have coke, lemonade, tonic and enough orange juice for breakfast at the Savoy. There are nuts, crackers and chocolates, biscuits, cheese and mustard. Ho, ho, ho Christmas is nearly here. Are we ready, yes we are.

Something tells me we ought to celebrate hard this year. It has been a bit of a difficult year to say the least, lots of pain and tears and loving and hugs. It has changed us as a family in ways which we will probably begin to realise as next year unfolds. But I won't continue down this line as that is for my new year missive.

Tomorrow should be the last time in the chemo suite, to have the PICC line removed. From now on its good old safe radiation, I will be able to find my wife glowing in bed each night. A new treatment, a new beginning. To wave away the PICC line I took a couple of better photos of it, this is not goodbye to an old friend, it's just farewell to a blood clot.

They were tiring days, Tuesday and Wednesday. The decs went up and I had to persuade Tracey that we needed to buy a turkey now! Not Thursday, not after hospital on Christmas eve but now. And how she fought, but I wore her down and we now have a fine bird in the fridge. We also bought crispy Chinese duck with pancakes and ho sin sauce for starter, that will be a bit different.

Putting the decs up was fun, we have a new artificial tree, a slimline white one from B&Q. Adams hates it. Tracey was worried about what we might bring in with a real one, she is still suffering from the risk of infection. But all the decs went up. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

So here we are, still tidying and still waiting for the patter of reindeer feet on the roof. I watched the last half of The Santa Claus, most of Shrek and have seen some of an old Two Ronnies Christmas special. I have sung a few carols and listen to some Christmas songs. The family are trying to get me to play some games but I am still resisting.

There are old family things going on here, Tracey gets desperate to play games with the kids, she puts it down to not having siblings to play with until Chris arrived and even he is much younger than her so wasn't much game fun. I hate playing games, to a point. I spent the whole of my youth engaging in wars with my brother which has scarred me when it comes to competitive games. All games must be played to within an inch of our lives. When I do relent though I really enjoy it especially when I win ( as I almost always used to do against my brother, as I have said before he will never read this).

Well only a short blog. I just wanted to make sure I had time to say

Happy Christmas Everybody

Thanks for everyones support this year and thanks for all the support I know we will get in the future.

Chris x