Santa has been!

What a relief for Max and Milo! Santa has found them . He managed to land his sleigh nearby and brought lots of exciting presents , leaving them next to our tiny tree.
Milo was pleased to see that Santa had drunk his milk and eaten the biscuit and his fears that the lettuce leaves were not enough for the reindeer were unfounded. All munched !
The boys still managed to wake up early and I think we were the only ones up in the hotel opening presents . Both of them are busy playing with their remote control cars while we sit on the balcony.

Our furniture is getting closer!

The shipping container's travels (including the Xbox!)

Exciting being able to track the storage container on its ship which has been steadily making progress from Felixstowe to its final landing point of Nellore north of Chennai on the East coast of India.

This plot was taken as it passed our 'second/third' home of Sicily about 10 days ago.

The container was transferred onto another vessel in Oman and it's current position is south of Sri Lanka so only a few days more at sea before it gets transferred to a freight train towards Bangalore inland customs depot for inspection and hopefully release without too much bother (but this is India so we can't plan anything!).

Christmas Day with a difference

Well I'm glad to say that the Christmas Day delivery was satisfactory. The boys seemed to be happy with Santa's selection this year.

Once we had managed to get the pressies unwrapped and play it was almost time to prepare for our first Indian Christmas dinner. Not a korma in sight as we headed to the Italian restaurant below the apartment complex.. In fairness the place was pretty full of customers tucking into the special menu. As you might guess Mrs C had to have pizza at some point with a portion of lasagne for good measure!

The buffet was accompanied by a little glass of 'vino collapso' and a couple of beers for Mr C too. The pastry chef was very proud of his collection and stood proudly at his creations helping to dish up. It would rude not to try one of each we thought as teh plate was filled.

With a short walk 'home' to the apartment we were able to then start the catch up of Face-timing back to the UK now that they had caught up with Christmas Day waking up (5.5 hours behind us)
It was a slightly cloudy day so this kept tech temperature down to about 27 degrees - and yes we know what sort of weather the UK was experiencing so didn't try to rub it in too much 😎

Evening was spent in the apartment watching a film and catching up with the world over facebook.

Boxing day was a little different as we were on a mission to get to the Phoenix shopping mall before the crowds. We certainly managed this and we were some of the first to enter. Nothing like the boxing day sales in the UK and we were in found what we needed and out within a couple of hours.
Afternoon was spent relaxing by the hotel pool and enjoying the afternoon sunshine.  
   

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was spent sitting by the pool until it got too hot and Milo was hungry.
We have managed to work the BBC IPlayer and the Amazon fire TV stick so we then spent the afternoon playing catch up on the programs we have missed.
At about 5 o'clock, as every evening this week, we could hear the singer warming up in the shopping mall below us and we decided to go and watch instead of listening on the balcony- although it can be heard from inside the apartment too!
The shopping centre has four floors of shops, a cinema, cafes and a huge Christmas tree where there was a Santa greeting children and also the singing plus backing singers singing Christmas carols.
Once we have walked a circuit of each floor we went back to the apartment as Milo wanted to go to bed early ready for Santa.