Yay! Christmas! Thu, 25th Dec 2008

I think this has been the best Christmas we’ve had so far. But, hey it was touch-and-go for a while.

Olivia is still not herself, not properly; she still smells sick (mothers will know what I mean), but she has perked up, and her fever has gone down a lot. She liked the snow footprints that Santa left behind — from the hearth to the presents! She spotted the half eaten carrot left by Rudolph too!

On the other hand the Baby, Dave Paul, decided to pick out lumps of black coal from the big brass scuttle, and one-by-one, drop each lump down the back of one of our big red sofa cushions.  Daddy Dave nearly had heart failure when he saw the mess!  He bathed the baby while I vacuumed up the coal and cleaned up.

This threw our tight schedule out of the window!

People were arriving and we hadn’t even set the table — the new table cloth was not big enough, and it seemed like millions of little things were going wrong.

In the end, everyone pitched in, and helped out — it was really brilliant! And it actually worked out better for it, more of a Christmas spirit I think.

We retired to the drawing room, and managed to get a fire going in the hearth.  Everyone slumped on the sofas while the kids played with their toys.  Once the kids were in bed, and we had watched the new Wallace and Gromit on TV, folks began slowly drifting away.

It would have been good to have managed out to the big-screen showing of “It’s a Wonderful Life” last night, pity Oli wasn’t well — but there’s always next year.

It was absolutely brilliant to speak with my sis Joobes on the telephone.  We missed her terribly this year. She had a quiet Christmas — which will be her last quiet anything once those twin lads of hers get themselves born.  I do hope she enjoyed the peace in deepest darkest England.