Christmas and Boxing Day 2014

For the past couple of years now, the Long family haven't always celebrated Christmas together on 25 December - we generally work out the first date we can get together from Christmas Day onwards.   Last year, I think we did Christmas Day on 28 or 29 December which was fab - as it gave me an extra couple of days to finish making presents!  (This year I woefully underestimated how long it would take me to make all presents - I made twenty-two and should really have started earlier than October!  So to reduce the stress on myself, five people received an IOU in a gift bag with some chocolate and a picture of what their present would be when I finally finished it. Much less stressful for me, although I hope not to repeat the exercise any time soon.)

So, on Christmas Day itself, we were five - Mum, Dad, Shannon, Amanda and me.   Rat and Pam were very busy with Pam's side of the family, and Nicholas was sleeping all day after having done a night shift at the hospital on Christmas Eve.  

Mum cooked a lovely Christmas dinner and we had our pudding in stages as we cheated and used the microwave to warm the custard and gluten-free cranberry pudding.  So we all got our puddings at one minute intervals!

The afternoon was spent crocheting, reading, poking the fire and listening to music.   Very quiet companionable day - really relaxing.

(Not quite sure what happened here, but I thought it looked quite arty!)

My new poncho being modelled as bloomers!

As for Boxing Day, it was a totally different story ..... we were eight plus reindeer/ dog.  

We all fit perfectly around Mum and Dad's new table - in all previous years, we've had to use a supplementary camping table to fit us all in which usually ended up in bickering such as "but I always sit on the small table", etc, etc.   No such arguing this year - we were a perfect fit.

Dinner was fab and didn't last very long!   After dinner, it was time for the boys to have a fag and for the washing up to be done and then we could get down to the present opening, which this year lasted about four hours!

Tradition dictates that someone is appointed Santa (Shannon this year) and she had her own little Santa helper (Rat).   Presents get sorted into piles and then one person gets a present at a time while we all ooh and aah and then move on to the next person.   It takes forever and we always need a tea break/ half time interval.   One day I will look back on this and think it is a lovely tradition which I miss, but, for now, it takes way too long!

So, a really lovely couple of days - no arguing; lots of laughter and singing; a lot of poking the fire (it's new and quite a distraction!); a bit of dancing to Boney M as always; waiting for Jim Reeves album to finally finish; counting down the songs left on the Elvis CD.   But mostly laughter and that lovely feeling when your jaws ache and tears are running down your face and you end up with a terrible stitch.   A perfect Christmas in fact.