Christmas and New Year

Two days before Christmas a friend asked me what we were doing this year. I said "nothing much", as I usually do, on the assumption that my life is uneventful and pretty hum drum.  Then I thought about it and realised that actually we were going to be quite busy this year.

Christmas eve was the Taylor family annual "let's eat lots of food and watch all the kids have fun" party.  This is always a good time.  All the cousins get to be together and us adults get to watch them being cute (even the teenagers), and have a laugh with each other.  This year my two bigger girls, Kirsty and Rebekah, were able to be there, and it was nice to see Kirsty connecting with Richard's oldest daughter Ciera.

Big Girls and little cousins

Katy and some little boy cousins

Katy and some little girl cousins

Christmas eve also saw the start of our advent calendars.  I had decided that I didn't want chocolate ones this year and when I saw the Lego advent calendars in the shop I couldn't resist.  I was supposed to buy one for the three of us at home to share, but I came out of the shop with two.  We really enjoyed opening these each day and adding to our Lego Christmas scenes. Although Katy was a little disappointed to be honest.  Her calendar was called Lego Friends but it only had two people in it.  Mine and Robert's was full of little people.

Katy's calendar day 1

Our calendar day 1

The completed calendars

Christmas day was a little different this year as Kim had decided to go to Australia with her boyfriend.  When Katy found out about this she declared that Kim had ruined Christmas.  Then it was my turn to have this accusation laid on me as we bought an artificial tree this year instead of a real one for the first time since I left home 29 years ago.  There was sound reasoning for this decision and all the girls did admit once it was decorated that it was a good tree despite not being real.

The tree that nearly ruined Christmas

Kim was replaced by Robert's brother Edward at our house on Christmas day.  My girls had been threatening to call him Kim all day but I don't think they actually did this to his face.

We started a tradition a few years ago to try and do something different with the labels on everyone's presents.  So far we have had baby photos, dates of birth, anagrams and dingbats.  The first thing everyone has to do is figure out what the labels mean and then decide which label is theirs before they can begin opening presents.  We stumped them for a while this year, and it was Edward who figured out that the labels were name meanings.

Googling their names.  You can see Katy's arm going up as she found out her name
meaning.

Opening presents always takes a while at our house, and some of the presents are well packaged/disguised with bubble wrap.  This delighted Kirsty and Edward in particular and produced one of my favourite photos this year.

Never mind the presents that people spent money buying us, just give me some bubble wrap.

Katy has a little bit of a penguin obsession at the moment, and I think it's fairly safe to say that this was her favourite present this year.

Awesome penguin onesie.

++++

The oldies at Christmas

Bekah.

We managed to speak to Kim via video chat on Facebook.  It was about 9:30pm in Brisbane and she was all full of Christmas dinner and nearly ready for bed as her body clock was still struggling to adjust to the time difference.

Boxing day was Jim and Liz and the boys day.  I had made the mistake of buying Robert presents he actually wanted this year, one of which was Risk Lord of the Rings edition, so the boys spent quite a large chunk of the afternoon playing it.  Liz, Katy and I retired to the lounge for a girly chat and had a go on one of Robert's other presents which was a quiz that you could play on his iPad with individual buzzers for each player.  It was pretty good, and we got quite competitive.  We also went back to their house to take their dog Copper out for a walk and when we returned, the boys had just finished playing their game. 

Kim's present to Robert was a magecube which is basically a cube made up of little magnetic balls that you can manipulate into all sorts of shapes.  It comes in a tin in a perfect cube shape, but when Kim got it, she couldn't resist playing with it and then couldn't get it back into a perfect cube shape.  She gave up and just rammed it back into the tin in a cubish shape.  I think we all attempted to get it back into a cube, but Matthew succeeded (with advice from Jim). Good times.

The next few days were something quite new for us.  Robert's sister Sarah and her husband had been given the chance to go away for a few days for free, and she asked us if we could look after her three year old, Darcy.  Being the youngest of five children and not having any little cousins around, I've not had a lot of experience of looking after other peoples children.  Now, I know what to do with a three year old, it's not like I'm too old to remember, but it's something different when the three year old doesn't belong to you, and she's never spent so much time alone with us before.  As it turns out it she was a delight to have around.  We raided the loft to see what toys we still had up there, and a large box of Barbie dolls and various Barbie paraphernalia went down a treat.

Katy and Darcy and Barbies

Apart from a couple of meal times when she declared she didn't like the food before she had even tasted it, and having to use some bribery and distraction techniques, all was good.  When coming down stairs on the third day she declared "this is the best Christmas ever". OK so she's only three and doesn't have a lot to go on, but it was just so darn cute.

After Darcy went home we had an evening to relax before heading down to London on New Year's eve.  Ever since they started doing big firework displays from the London Eye we had wanted to go down and finally decided to do it this year.  Thanks to Rebekah working for the IHG hotel group we get a discount on rooms, so can afford to stay in some of the nicer hotels without spending too much.  I know this is only a job while she is at university, but she can never leave.

The drive down was no fun as it rained quite heavily most of the way, but by the time we left the hotel to get in place to watch the display it had stopped, and despite the forecast saying it would rain again later, it stayed dry for the rest of the evening.  We didn't manage to get down to the riverside as we weren't there early enough, but we still managed to see most of the display and were next to Big Ben to hear the chimes at midnight first hand.

It was about 1:30am by the time we got back to the hotel and we were all feeling a little peckish, so decided to indulge in a little room service.  We had some very nice burgers.  Proper beef with shredded bacon and cheese, cooked like a burger should be cooked.  

By the time we woke up later that day it was nearly time to check out.  It was a little colder than the day before, but it was a beautiful sunny winter's day, and although we were tired on the drive home and had to make a few stops, we still managed to arrive safe and sound just after 6:30.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that Christmas and New Year were a lot of fun.

Resolutions for 2013?  To carry on being awesome, and blog more often.