The eve of Christmas eve..

which is nowhere near as silly as the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of Christmas eve type stuff that me and Frazer used to do when we were little!

Had a phonecall regarding finances yesterday which was not the anticipated good news or bad news but just news of further delay – ah well! 🙁

Nipped out to Boots with the children to get a couple of last minute pressies, it was busy, they were awful and I did that hissing type of shouting you do in public but I did manage to get everything I wanted though.

In the afternoon Davies played on the pc – a mix of the NickJr website and a Dora cdrom game. He seems to have clicked somehow with the idea of reading and is quite happily spelling words out to read them and also spelling his name on the keyboard without any hesitation – hands off has worked well for him and he is now doing it because he *wants* to, and asking for assistance when he can’t rather than me standing over him doing it because I want him to. 🙂 Scarlett and I played together although I can’t for the life of me remember at what but I know it made Davies all jealous!

Mum and I headed off to Tesco at 7pm ish to get Christmas food shopping, she’s finishing it off today and it was relatively painless -both in terms of the crowds being fairly small and the paying for it all being down to someone else! 😉 We got back here by about 8.30pm, Dad was already here and Ady cooked up sausage and mash for everyone.

About 1am Davies woke wailing and was sick 🙁 Not at all sure what that was about as he has been fine today and crawled into bed with me and went straight back to sleep where he slept through until gone 8am this morning. He is doing a lot of blinking and twitching and his behaviour is fairly typical of a small boy two days before Christmas really so I think it was probably just excitement and too many chocolate tree decorations!

Today we have had a nice day actually. This morning the children made Christmas cards for Ady while I wrapped all the remaining presents. Davies did a picture of Ady, me, Davies and Scarlett with a snowman and then with minimal help wrote ‘Daddy, Merry Christmas, Love Davies’ really nicely. Scarlett drew a picture of me dressed up as a Christmas tree (a pink one!), a picture of Ady dressed up as a robot, herself as a fairy and Davies as a snowman – fairly recognisable too! Then she copied her name for the first ever time and did an excellent job – it actually brought tears to my eyes to see her first ever attempt – very emotional!

Then we painted a mug each for Granny and Grandad from some kits we’ve had kicking around for ages – Davies did Granny’s and painted the word Granny and an underwater scene, Scarlett did Grandad’s so I painted Grandad and she did some vision in pink, which I’m sure he’ll love. They need to dry for 24 hours before being baked and then I can wrap them tomorrow.

My Dad arrived then and played with Tarly while I made a start on the final batches of mince pies I’ll be cooking this year (about 120 done today, that should last and if it doesn’t then I have no more mincemeat anyway – and if anyone leaves a recipe for one I will delete their comment 😉 !) and Davies played Zoombinis which he has been doing for hours today! Ah well, that’s educational! He’s sitting in the playroom with a Christmas cd playing and singing along to it as he plays – can’t believe he knows all the words to all the songs – clearly an inherited talent! 😉

Ady arrived home shortly afterwards and then David and Jeanette – the Thank You neighbours called over to deliver presents for the children and stayed for tea and mince pies. I realised too late that I have been calling the mother Doreen for ages and her name is Joyce – oops!

We’re about to settle down to watch A Christmas Carol on C4 and tonight Ady and I are off to his staff Christmas party – apparantly a few of them are looking forward to meeting me – this on the basis of being a Home Educator (bit odd!) and that Ady once had me on speakerphone in the office while I was talking to him and broke off to yell at someone about jumping the queue in a carpark (feisty and a bit scary!). Happily the frugal life seems to have meant I’ve lost a few lbs (I’d like to pretend it was stress and worry but the truth is that not drinking alcohol for half the week will have ensure the weight has come off – I was the same with both previous occassions of not drinking – pregnancy, so I know it to be the case. Fact is I’d rather be fat and pissed than skinny and sober, although I imagine the latter is probably more attractive 😉 ) so my nicest dressy suit fits me rather than requiring all sorts of uncomfortable scaffolding underneath – I will be accessorising it with sparkles and cleavage naturally!

I’m feeling really quite festive today – Christmas? Bring it on!