We have to do ‘thank you-for-the-amazing-Christmas-gifts’ cards. This task is proving to be more difficult than it needs to be. Attempting to get both boys in the ‘right’ mood to take a photo is almost impossible. Where did they get that moodiness from?!


Okay, so photos taken, printed onto card and it looks okay. Now all that’s left to do is to have Logaan write them up and post them off before, well as soon as possible really. Happy New Year!

It’s that Chrimbo limbo time, the presents are all open, but we still have family to visit, leaving on the train tomorrow for three and a half hours of quality time together, people watching, pulling faces at other peoples too loud phone conversations, doing puzzles, reading stories to whoever has to sit by us, and wondering if we can afford a something from the trolley.  Cherries picked from the 'whoops' selection in Asda's need eating and G suggests a chocolate cherry bun recipe, as she particularly enjoys de-stoning three or four and then leaves the rest for me.  We decided to make them look like Christmas puddings by turning them upside down and icing them with a thick blob of white icing green glitter icing holly leaves, and berry sugar balls. G did a lot of it herself, I was chief get the eggshell out of the mixture monitor, and do the final stirring when arms get tired and fancy pogoing around the house on the new bungee bouncer that Father Christmas supplied. This is fitting as on the actual Christmas day, me and G served the pudding and custard by that very transportation method of pogoing it from the kitchen to the living room to our assorted diners. Possibly that cherry beer had affected me a little more than I had thought at the time......but it was G's suggestion, and we are a team.

Eilir has never had a proper Christmas stocking. In our household we've always used pillow cases, so when I suggested that we make one, Eilir was over the moon. On Christmas Eve we still hadn't started, but the sewing machine was still set up from the sock monsters and I thought it wouldn't take us too long (that was a mistake!). We chalked out a stocking shape on an old green sheet folded in two and cut it out. I got out lots of bits of material (cut-offs from curtains etc), and suggested different ways we could decorate the stocking, including cutting out letters to make words that we could sew on applique style. Again Eilir had his own ideas, deciding he wanted stripes of different materials the length of the stocking and a length of red fun-fur at the top (left over from an old carnival costume of his). Eillir arranged the stripes and I tacked them on while we watched Matilda on the telly.

We then went back to our team approach to the machine work, Eilir on peddle and me on guiding and calling out commands like "Put your foot down", "Step on it" and "STOP". Eilir was getting really into using the machine and taking a great interest in how it worked, he loved it when we had to refill the bobbin - "Wow! That's really cool!" By this time it was getting very late (and me a little worried - I hadn't even started wrapping any presents...!), so Eilir got ready for bed while I persevered in finishing it off. It was eventually done at 10.30pm, Eilir took it upstairs and promptly fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.