Girls to Brighton

Rhiannon and Agnes have been planning a girls shopping trip to Brighton for the past couple of weeks. Today was the big day and so we picked up Leigh and Aggie at 9:15 am and we had a gorgeous day exploring around Brighton! As it turns out, today was an exceptionally sunny (and bright, ha ha) and cold day, and it was wonderful to spend the better part of the day wandering around.

A new New Year's tradition

New Year's doesn't feel properly kicked off without a trip to the beach. Yesterday was New Year's Day, but it was such a grizzly, drizzly, misty, cold day that it was absolutely perfect for lounging in pajamas all day and hardly going out of the house at all! Today, on the other hand, was crystal clear gorgeousness. And fortunately it was also a public holiday to make up for New Years being on a Sunday this year.

We mobilised quite early and got to Seaford beach around 9:45am, parked at the far end of the beach and walked towards the cliffs. We did go partially up the hill to a lookout, but then Rhodri and Rhiannon and Bentley turned back while Tryfan and I headed further up to the peak.

 It was chilly and very windy, but that's how it should be at the beach on New Years Day +1!

Since we were all pretty hungry after this walk, we decided to go for brunch somewhere, and that somewhere turned out to be Bill's in Lewes (the original Bill's, https://bills-website.co.uk/). What a treat! I don't normally take photos of my food, but this smoked salmon and avocado with poached eggs, lime and chili on wholegrain toast was just amazing. In the background you can see Rhiannon's steak and eggs, which was also delicious.

We decided that this should be our New Year's tradition: beach and then Bill's for breakfast. It is especially appropriate because it was always Grandpa Bill who insisted that we go to Hendry's beach in Santa Barbara to have breakfast at the Brown Pelican restaurant on New Year's Day when I was growing up. I think Grandpa Bill would definitely approve of this new tradition (except probably not the timing of it because he always liked to get "good early starts", and our 9:30 am start would have been about 2 hours too late for him)! 

Happy New Year 2017!

We welcomed in 2017 properly down at the village hall last night/ this morning. Rhods and I went over in the afternoon to set up, then back "for reals" at 6:30 pm to party.

Starting to set up (decorations already there!)

In the end there were 9 families including us (18 adults, 23 kids), and we had a great time! Lots of dancing, good food, no injuries, and we rang in 2017 as a happy group.

The way we did the music was to put together a list on Spotify, then sign up for a free 7 day trial of Spotify Premium, which lets you download any track to play offline. Result! We had a playlist of 100 songs to see us through the New Years Eve party, so we downloaded that and brought our old speakers and current receiver and a bunch of cables to be able to play music from the iPad through the big speakers, and it worked a treat! We borrowed a couple of disco spotlight projector thingys, and we also had glow balloons, glowsticks, and decorative tablecloths. Each family brought some food and drinks to share, and it was just a really fun party!

The best part was being able to just boogie without care or consequence, and to not feel obligated to converse. The kids ran wild, and when they weren't dancing they were outside playing football in the dark. Since everyone there knew each other quite well, there was no dimension of social obligation or introductions or getting-to-know-you chit chat. Not that I'm against any of that, but it was quite nice to not have any of that and just purely enjoy the evening. And since we at Lewis Central were the ones to put together the playlist, they were all the songs that we like to boogie to!
Anyway, Happy New Year for 2017 and best wishes to our readers!