Tidings of Comfort & Joy

Christmas 2014 is in the bag, and it was just as perfectly imperfect as we had hoped. I couldn't unlock the neighbour's door to get the gifts we had hidden in there (with their consent, of course) and we nearly missed the ISS Father Christmas as a result. The Mister almost forgot to put the veg on for Christmas Dinner so we had to try and slow everything down for 15 minutes to get it caught up. The kids bickered. We all ate too much. The playing of board games descended into chaos when the four year old wasn't winning, or indeed tall enough to reach across the table to move her pawn. I can sit here now and chuckle to myself at the memory, when at the time I was taking a deep breath and rolling my eyes heavenwards wondering why on Earth I do it to myself every year, why we don't wait until she's in bed.

Simple answer is, it's not a family game night if we're not all there and if someone isn't being a sore loser.

Christmas Eve was spent at home, making the final preparations for the big day after a breakfast of home-made waffles and pancakes. We tidied up the house - cleaning bedrooms and stocking up the cupboards and fridges with the last few things. We had hot chocolate and watched Father Christmas fly over at 5:22pm, the Elves brought the kids new PJs each and a DVD for us all to watch together, and we had chicken enchiladas for dinner. The stockings were hung up and 4/5 kids headed off to bed, and the Mister and A assembled E's main present - Barbie's utterly bloody enormous bright pink Malibu house - so it was ready for her in the morning, while I sneaked around filling the aforementioned stockings.

Christmas morning, the three boys gathered at the end of our bed and stood there watching us sleep until they made themselves obvious enough to disturb us (not at all creepy). They had apparently already been through their stockings and waited for an hour and they were bored. The girls were then woken and got to briefly inspect the contents of their stockings before we all trundled downstairs to see what was under the tree.

Gift unwrapping doesn't generally take long in our house, and it's usually done in turns however this year J only had three gifts to open from us due to the cost of the one & only thing he actually wanted and although they all have the same budget, the amount of gifts that can be bought for E as opposed to A for that amount is very different. So we simply took turns until the older ones ran out of gifts to open, and then E went to town on the rest of hers. My living room is currently waist high in packaging & my recycling bin is full.

I think everything got what they wanted, and we all spent time enjoying our new things while the Mister went to take the in-laws to visit his Aunt, Uncle & Grandmother before bringing MIL & FIL home to have lunch with us. A traditional roast turkey dinner followed, with pigs in blankets and cranberry sauce aplenty. Oh, and a pizza for L. The post-Christmas dinner lazing on the sofa ensued, with the soaps on TV for MIL and the kids scattered about the house enjoying their spoils. It was just a lovely slow, relaxing day.

Boxing Day was welcomed with a breakfast of eggs & bacon and freshly brewed coffee and was spent endeavouring to reassemble the house in to some sort of order. We failed miserably, gave up and spent the afternoon lounging around in our PJs before attempting a game of Disney Monopoly. A string of guests arrived at this point and so the game was abandoned (not before we'd enjoyed a couple of tantrums and I was wrongly accused of cheating) and we fully intend to have another go over the next few days.

We made our own mince pies for Father Christmas. We made gingerbread. We pottered about in our nightwear for several days, eating too many goodies and being somewhat on the lazy side. We loved and loathed being in each others company in equal measure. We laughed. We had fun. We argued. We slept. We watched entirely too much rubbish on TV and the house looks like the aftermath of a nasty industrial accident.

It was fantastic. Let's do it all again next year.