Merry Christmas!

 Merry Christmas, friends!

We are at home for Christmas this year.  If you follow my blog, you will know that sometimes we spend Christmas on our narrowboat, Uplander II, but this week the weather has been windy and wet, which is not nice for boating.

We bears enjoy getting the house ready for Christmas.  We made some of our decorations last year, including some bunting from old Christmas cards and gardening string.  We made some with bigger triangles for decorating human houses, and small bunting for our Bear Basket and to send to our Small Bear friends.

We also love helping to put up the Christmas tree.  Polar and Grizzly's tree is a very old artificial one (over 30 years old) and gets stored in the loft in sections, so the branches always need straightening out again when it come back downstairs.

Then we help to drape the lights around it, and the baubles and tinsel, although it looks even better when there are some presents gathered underneath!

Polar was really pleased to have home-grown sprouts from the allotment ready for Christmas dinner this year.  On Christmas Eve, Endon Bear helped her to pick some evergreens to make a nice table decoration.

Polar helped us to put out our Christmas stockings, in the hope that we might get some little presents, because we have tried to be good bears this year.  

 

Then our human guardians lit the little Angel Chimes.  We love these, although we are careful to keep our fur away from the candle flames. 

We were tucked up in our Bear Basket early on Christmas Eve, so woke up bright and early on Christmas Day and checked our stockings for little treats.  Polar had made some new sock jumpers for the "Pub Bears" who used to live at the Rising Sun, Dougie, Mac and Wade.  Mac still needs some trousers if he is going to come out on adventures with us, but Polar says she will try to make some for him soon.  We think they would enjoy being boating bears as they used to live near the Macclesfield Canal.

Grizzly fetched the presents from under the tree for us and our hooms and we started to open them.  Our friend Tour Guide Ted had sent us some nice things and we had a very big parcel from Polar, that we decided to save until last.  

We had given Polar some of our pocket money to buy Grizzly a pair of woolly gloves, but we didn't manage to get Polar a present, which made us sad, but she said it was enough of a present to get lots of hugs from us when she needed them this year.

Dudley Bear had a little badge for the Dudley Canals Trust.  He said he would love to have a trip on the little boat that goes through the tunnel near the Black Country Museum and into the big caves underneath, and then have tea and cake at the Gongoozler restaurant. Polar says that would be a great day out if we're in Birmingham on Uppie again this year.  Mac found a pack of playing cards that he thought would be good for taking on the boat too.

Charlie Bear found a bag full of little chocolate, bear-sized Christmas puddings, which we are looking forward to eating, and there was a little bag of M&Ms for the cubs.  

 

There was a chocolate bear too.  We aren't sure about eating bear-shaped chocolate - we might have to get Polar or Grizzly to break it up so it doesn't look like a bear any more!

Then it was time to open the big parcel.  We thought it might be a cake, although it was very heavy.  It was hard for us to move it about to get to the sellotape and unwrap it.  

When the paper came off, we all cheered - it was a lovely collection of all of the Paddington Bear stories!  Polar said she could read them to us as bedtime stories, and the bigger bears in the hug could read them to the cubs.  We love hearing about Paddington's adventures, so we were all very happy with this present and gave Polar and Grizzly lots and lots of hugs.

All of the Hug came downstairs for Christmas tea, including Old Bunny.  Polar hadn't made a Christmas cake this year, but she had made trifle with home-grown raspberries for tea!  Then we settled down to watch Christmas television shows - the cubs hid behind Polar when Dr Who was on!

We had a lovely day and hope that all of our friends have had a super Christmas too.