Happy New Year to you all and hope you all have a happy, healthy and prosperous 2008

Christmas for us passed by quietly and we had a nice lazy day opening presents, watching a bit of tv and taking a nice walk in the winter sunshine around the olive & orange groves surrounding the village. As we decided to eat early evening we didn’t BBQ the steak as it was dark and nippy up on the terrace and so cooked in the kitchen and relaxed afterwards by watching a film.

26th is back to normal here in Spain (no Boxing Day) and so it was back to work on the house and Phil doing more plastering. The weekend just before Xmas we filled a huge skip with building rubble and then moved a load of sand back to the house from the top of the village. Took us 2 days of hard graft but satisfying when it was all done. We shouldn’t need any more sand for a while now as there is a massive amount to keep us going.

In between Christmas and New Year we had a few satellite tv installations to keep us busy and New Years Eve was spent tucked up inside with a few drinks, and as Spanish custom goes I stuffed 12 grapes into my mouth at midnight to ensure good luck for the forthcoming year! Not easy trying to keep up with the church bells and not choking!! We then watched the New Year celebrations on the tv back in the UK and the huge firework display in London – after which it was off to bed ready for another day of work on the house!

My brother is coming over to stay for 12 days on 3 January and so looking forward to having him here with us. We are taking him into Granada for the 3 Kings Procession on the night of 5th January and then the next day we are off to the Conchar Mosto Wine Festival – should be a good day!! After that we’ll play it by ear – have fixed up some rock climbing for him with another English guy who lives in the valley so he’s looking forward to that. We might also get a chance to go up to the ski resort and get some snowboarding in. There is some rain forecast for later this week which means some more snow higher up which is good news.

Work on the new living area and bedroom is progressing steadily and fingers crossed by end January we might be able to move into it – the new log burner keeps it lovely and warm.

That’s all for now folks – hope you all had a great Christmas and best wishes to you all for 2008.