Chamonix Christmas!

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Christmas officially started when Rosy arrived back from the UK on Sunday 21st with still warm homemade mince pies. They had to be opened and investigated at customs but made it through luckily!

Monday night we had the office Christmas do, roast turkey dinner followed by the best ever sticky toffee pudding plus loads of free wine and I think secret santa had some inside info this year as I got Bugsy Malone DVD!

Tuesday late start in the office with morning after hangovers & gossip but Rosy & Rory had volunteered to go to Carrefour to do the Christmas food shopping. They managed to get most things but we had to do a tour of the supermarkets in town to get the cranberry sauce and sprouts.

Christmas Eve in the office, more homemade mince pies, Christmas karaoke and a run through of Rory’s Christmas dinner preparation excel spreadsheet. This caused much hilarity in the office :
Sheet 1 - allocated tasks for everyone with time slots, locations and utensils required!
Sheet 2 - detailed cost analysis per head with receipts from each supermarket
After 2 hours peeling spuds and crossing sprouts we headed out for quite a late night of 2for1 cocktails!

Christmas Day we all headed out skiing / boarding in the morrning - some earlier than others. Back at 3 to cook the stuffing (my allocated role) and then over to the Mojo House for turkey countdown. Rory had printed out instructions from the internet on turkey roasting and carving and followed them to the letter. There were 11 of us for dinner, everyone brought a plate and presents to open. The €10 budget stretched to imported crackers and everyone happily wore their gold paper hats, told rubbish jokes and then amused themselves with the toy yoyo and plastic puzzle. Dessert was a choice between chocolate fondant pudding (Marc) and raspberry trifle (Rosy) followed by washing up (Helen & Nic). Poor Alex had broken his collar bone on the mountain on Christmas morning and was excused from all duties!

I had far more presents to open and present envy from everyone else, many Christmas novelties, 2 hot water bottles, a scarf and quite a few body wash/body lotion combos, always good considering the price of them here but think everyone might be trying to tell me something ! After far too many loops of the cheesy Christmas CD and with wine paranoia setting in, I headed home wearing my paper hat as the others continued the party at the bar next door!

Boxing Day back to work for turkey and stuffing baguettes in amongst the spreadsheets and then home for an early night.

Monday 29th we had three birthdays to celebrate in the office, 22 of us went out for burgers and drinks after at Bar'd Up. Some even tagged along with the usual Monday Bar Crawl until 4am !

Then it was New Year 2009 ! After another Mojo house party, we all headed out into town square at midnight for the annual celebration/riot/firework throwing extravaganza, and on the stroke of midnight, just like last year, snow started to fall. Had to do a token couple of hours in the office on New Years Day, but not actually working and dont think I was up to snowboarding anyway.

Am just about recovered from the Chamonix shenanigans, my snowboard is in for repair again after some idiot careered out of control over my board and took off half the laminate so might have to do some more skiing ! Off to Courchevel this week to rescue the resort manager and accounts rep from the edge of suicide. Accounts should never drive anyone to such extreme measures!

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