This has been one of the nicest Christmases I can remember in a long time. No stress. No bickering. No falling out. Just lots of silliness and rubbing along together brilliantly. My Christmas started two weeks ago when I decorated the tree with the help of my little friend.
I was thrilled with the way Andy's present had turned out - I had lots of random items - wine, port, crackers, cheese, chocolates, etc, and really didn't want to wrap each thing separately - so had a brainwave of finding a suitable container for it all - I found a fab wine merchant on the internet and bought a wine crate for everything. It looks brilliant. And I was so pleased with the way that Andy's cardi turned out - he did say that it would take him longer to get ready to go out now because of all the buttons to do up - eleven!
This year, we managed to actually have Christmas Day on 25 December - this doesn't always happen due to weird shifts at work and other family visits. We had a planning meeting a few weeks ago to share the jobs out - Mum and Dad hosted us and cooked the meat. Amanda and Shannon did spuds and parsnips. Pam did the rest of the veg. And I did tunis cake, Christmas muffins, fudge and crackers and dips. Mine was definitely the easiest option as I could do everything in advance!
The deal in our family - and we've done this forever so know no different - is that no-one gets any presents until after dinner when everything is washed up and put away. Andy likens it to a concentration camp, but, if you don't know any different, it's fine. We had so many presents again this year - in fact, we even lost a crate's worth of presents and didn't even notice until halfway through proceedings!
A really lovely day - tonnes of lovely presents, lovely food, good company. What more could anyone ask for?
On Boxing Day, there were only six of us as Rat and Pam spent the day with Pam's family but it was pretty much more of the same - food, laughing, chatting - the only thing missing was the presents, but we'd already had enough of those!
Another fab day. But Dad's parting shot as we left was pleading with us not to visit for at least a week!
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