Weekly News Round-Up #80: 21/12/2014

Happy Yule, everyone! It's been such an exciting week for us, you just gotta ove this time of year.

At the beginning of the week, pretty much all of us went into town to get Christmas presents for eachother. Splitting up into pairs, we managed to get te majority of things that we wanted. I'd call that a good day's work.

What was also tremendously exciting was that Arcadia arrived in the post. Of course, we carried on reading and also contemplated perhaps learning it and making a production out of it for next summer. We'll see whether or not we go ahead with that plan.

Come Friday, it was time to exchange and open our presents from eachother. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for my wonderful gifts, it is very kind of y'all.

The year is incomplete unless we have our traditional game of Squares. As usual, ANT and Master were required to concentrate fully on the task at hand. It came down to a pretty close call where there was a particular chain that could make it or break it for both sides. In the end, Master won 57-33. The level of game play was truly astounding, well done to the both of them.

Promptly afterwards, we were ushered down to the astro turf, where the Academy had planned an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most Christmas crackers pulled at the same time. It took a little bit of setting up, what with trying to get so many people coordinated. In the end, there wasn't much of a countdown and the drone plane cameras managed an appearance before, when we were getting ready, but not when the crackers were pulled. It was a good attempt, but never mind.

After a busy week, we were all invited over to Wicks' for a Yule dinner. We all contributed in some shape or form; Master made a shawarma starter, Wicks, Ruby and Cap prepared the apple and pumpkin curry, Sharah made yellow snow cupcakes (as pictured below) and ShoeLobber brought the sweets.

Santa's making a snow angel to the left

Post-dinner activities included a card game using two decks of cards and plenty of presents wrapped up. Both decks would be shuffled (quite unsuccessfully in or case) and one deck would be dished out to the players.The remaining deck would be given to the Game Master, Wicks, who would take a card from the deck, say the card and whoever has the same card would put down their card and take a present (hearing the name of the card correctly provd to be quite a task for Master). However when all the presents have been taken from the middle of the table, players can take from eachother. This continues until all the cards have been called out. One particular present that we all seemed to be fixated on was an oddly shaped item, at one point described as the 'one present to rule them all, [the] one present to bind them'. In the end, ANT got it and, when unwrapped, she was delighted to find that it was a fridge magnet snow dome featuring a dolphin, which she named Sid (as picture below). For the rest of the evening, ANT seemed totally contented, her and Sid were inseparable.

Sid, the dolphin

Meanwhile, ConscienceSarah wound up with both of the meh presents; some tissues and sponges, which she named Spongebob and Derek. Here they are:

Spongebob and Derek

ArwaChihuahua also got a pretty sweet deal with a children's toy cutlass, which turned out to be multi-purpose as it could also hold a lollipop!

Throughout the evening, we decided to use the cake tin lids to reflect light onto Sharah, creating something along the lines of a spotlight effect. The rest of the time we spent reading Arcadia and listening to pan pipes music. It must be said that we all fell in love with the pan pipes. Some tunes that were particularly enjoyed were a Christmas medley and a wonderfully emotional rendition of 'You Raise Me Up'. The ones that we've linked were particularly appreciated because of the musicians' apparent love for what they do. On a side note, Wicks did experience a jolt back whilst listening, which sent Ruby and Master into fits of laughter.

All in all, a smashing time was had by all. Thank you to Wicks for being a fantastic host and everyone for making it so much fun.

We won't be having a WNR for a few weeks now, but hopefully we'll resume our usual antics on Sunday 25th January. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and wish you all the best in the new year.

Until next year, have a good one :D