Christmas 2009

It's just occured to me that I haven't put anything about Christmas on here! Unfortunately when I think about Christmas I think about everyone being not very well! The girls and I were sick just before Christmas, Ben was sick just after and my dad, brother, sister and Esther were all sick New Year's Eve. Poor Esther got it twice in less than 2 weeks! In amongst all that yuckiness we had some good times though!

It was our first christmas at home this year. It was nice being able to do things on our own schedule instead of having to wait for everyone else to get out of bed! We had Christmas dinner with friends on Christmas Eve which was great - especially the leftovers which meant I didn't have to cook everything on Christmas Day! It was an Anglo-American affair - I've never had Christmas dinner with deviled eggs before - so amongst other things we took along some crackers - the pulling type not the cream type! The kids enjoyed it as did we.

Christmas morning was not an eary start, probably came down stairs at about 7 - 7.30, checked if Father Christmas and the reindeer had eaten their treats (they had), then I had taped ribbon over the living room door which the kids had to cut so we could get in - another sign Father Christmas had been and didn't want to kids sneaking in without the parents.

Eliza of course liked to play with each gift as she opened them so she ended up having 'help' from her sister-

Esther had been asking for a Snow White dress for quite a while and luckily I found one in her size in the charity shop for £2! She was super pleased about it but her favourite toy was a Dora the Explorer bath toy she had had her eye on for a while.Here is Esther learning some new moves with her new ballet DVD:

After our pancake breakfast we got ready and went to the park in the snow which we still had - it was pretty cold but good to get out of the house:

We watched some movies and had some food but other than that it was a pretty quiet day. I think we'll stay home again next year but we want some family or friends to come over - we like the company!

We went up to my parents on the Sunday after Christmas with my brothers and sister already there. Ben's parents came too. Ben got sick unfortunately. The next day Adam's then fiancee Alexa came over from Germany so it was nice to spend some time getting to know her a bit better since we had only met her once before. The trip was cut short for us when more people started getting 'the lurgy' so we decided to get the heck out of dodge on New Year's Day and came back home to our iceberg of a house. It took all day to thaw it out! Note to self: when going away in the winter just leave the heating on normal settings or you'll regret it!

So there was have it, our Christmas in a nutshell!