Turkey & Gravy, Stuffing, Lasagne, Sweet & Sour Meatballs, Beef Curry, Mushrooms stuffed with Feta Cheese, Mashed Potatoes, Taco Salad, Bananas & Chocolate, Fruit & Whipped Cream, Sweet Potato Pie, Chocolate Fudge, Chocolate Chip Muffins, Chocolate Cake & a whole lot more.

This is what happens when you have a potluck Christmas Dinner with 3 over-dealous hostesses and guests that are fabulously well endowed with culinary skills and ambition.

I am officially stuffed and now take this opportunity to warn you all that hosting such an event could be hazzardous to your waist and appetite. On the upside your grocery bill for the week following will be nil, as your fridge will be filled with copious amounts of leftovers....

In other news of last night's Christmas Celebration:

Gift exchanging can get nasty, espeically when you play the Chinese Gift Exchange Game. This involves the participants picking numbers and then, in order, picking a gift from teh pile. The trickis that the second person can pick a gift from the pile OR steal the first person's gift. If you are teh last person to pick, you can steal ANYONE's gift. Due to objections from a few of the guests, we had to go with a 'nicer' version of this game. in the original game, you would open your gift immediately, so the next person could choose from an opened gift belonging to someone else or take their chances with the pile. In our version, everyone had to keep their gifts wrapped until the game was finished and everyone had a gift. I ended up with a jelly bean candy dispenser - very fitting I think. Personally though, I think my gifts were among the more interesting - I had wrapped up a walking dinosaur that runs on batteries and a snowman that grows when you sprinkle it with magic water. Shields insinuated my 2 in 1 gift might be dodgy when she shook it, but I think Rachel was chuffed with both gifts :)

It is v difficult to wash dishes without hot water. Thank goodness for bathtubs and electric showerheads. Yep, we gave our dishes a good ol bath last night!

Hmmmmm..Oh right..did I mention we have a FAB group of friends here last night. Seriously, I think moving to a new city is THE best way to meet new people (unless you move to Dublin..but thats another story), and I am so glad that we ended up in Edinburgh, which seems to have more than its share of friendly and fun people!

Ms MacPhail informed me earlier today that there are only 188 hrs before we will be flying across the Atlantic....

Oh -as for the rest of the weekend - yeah it was fun - Return to the Walkabout went ahead smoothly - it was packed for once - v unusual (reason was a rugby game)..even more unusual - it was packed with good scenery (see above reason :)

K - back to work here...will write again soon(ish)