We'd originally planned to celebrate 'our' Christmas on Friday 28th - which is the first day that Chris is not working. However, following a call to his parents yesterday to wish them a Happy Christmas, I found out that they are expecting us to arrive on Friday and not Saturday as I thought. So Christmas was brought forward to today - not that anyone truely minded! The only problem was the joint of beef I had planned for our dinner was still in the freezer - however Sausage & Mash is our traditional food on Boxing Day, and it went down really well! Lots of fun was had by all, I got some wonderful gifts - including a lovely scarf knitted by the lovely Lou and a wonderful bear made by Joe. However this just sums up our day. Hope you all had great days.

Party Food

It's the Children's school party today and these are the goodies they are taking in to share. There has obviously been some testing going on - in the interests of quality of course - or at least that was what I was told. Plus there has been a request to make more of these at the weekend.

Presents for teacher

Well not actually the teacher - but the thought is the same! Lou has made this for the lady that she talks with. She's having some issues again and has really low self esteem and she feels she can't talk to Chris or I, for fear of us 'changing our mind' and sending her away. We tell her we won't - no matter what she does, but it just doesn't penetrate her fear. So anyway, she made this for the lady she talks to - and is rightly proud of herself, which is a great start. My contribution was sewing the last inch up.

Saturday evening

Two words....
Lasagne
Gethin

Now really - do I need to say anymore?

On the first day of Christmas...

Well I can state that there are NO partridges in this tree! There are however 54 packages all tied up with ribbon, red for our daughter and green for son. Why 54 and not 48? Well it fits our family! This Christmas, as is usual, Chris is working again. So whilst most people will be tucking in to a dinner with all the trimmings, the children and I are planning to be in our PJ's all day eating 'naughty nibbly' food whilst Chris will be at work ready to go to any unfortunate person/family who should need an ambulance. We've had one Christmas together properly in the last 7 years - where he isn't working Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter about it - I'm used to it now.

When the children came to us in 2003 we explained that Daddy was often working Christmas and together as a family we decided to 'move' Christmas. The children chose to not open presents until we were all together and thats what we have done since. This year we will have our Christmas Day on 28th December - hence the 27 gifts each! This may have swung the children into chosing to wait for our Christmas!!

Christmas

Last day of November today and I am SO disorganised. I really don’t know what has happened to me this year - but it isn’t good. I’ve forgotton birthdays, appointments and usually by this stage I am READY for Christmas - thats all the cards written, presents wrapped, advent calendar made, cake iced, Christmas meat ordered. I’ve done none of it so far.

My tree goes up tonight, so I’ve got a heavy day of work planned - plus a custom order from Etsy to complete, and I’m away tomorrow for the weekend on a training course and just to add to it - I’ve got some ironing I really must do. Guess I need to log off here, get the children off to school and then work like a mad thing.

The only good thing is that my husband has his works night out tonight, so I won’t feel too guilty about ploughing on through into the evening.

Tired

I’m so tired today. I had a really busy day yesterday with a cello lesson, lots of baking, a trip to the court to meet my mentor (just become a JP), followed by home to do tea, before a committee meeting. To top it off we also had two of the children’s schoolfriends over after school for tea and to sleep over. This was the biggest problem… I think they finally stopped chatting just after 11pm last night.

Burnt flour smells awful - as I discovered last night, when I went to take the loaf out of the breadmaker - I’d forgotten to put any water in! So a new loaf was made ready for toast this morning. However I managed to get 4 children up, washed and dressed within 40 minutes, breakfast made for us all - including bacon and scrambled eggs, so if I do nothing else today least I achieved something.