Up with the alarm this morning after far too late a night and then off to Pets@Home soon after they opened at 8am. The very lovely and friendly assistant (who I suspect may well have been hitting on me, she was very touchy feely and asked with rather too much meaning if I liked her bow tie!) helped me choose a hamster, went through all the pet ownership stuff with me and then after further banter with the store manager who was serving on the till and confided he thought he may have already drunk too much coffee this morning I walked back across the road and installed Hamster in his new home tucked away in our bedroom. He is very cute, fluffy long haired white with cinnamon coloured patches, brown eyes and twitchy whiskers. I’m really not a fan of caged animals but I do know he will be very much loved, looked after and is likely to not spend an awful lot of time in his cage anyway given he will be Scarlett’s new best friend :).
I finished some last minute wrapping and then we woke the children, giving them a fairly long lie in in deferance to sleep deprivation from the night before and anticipation of an early start tomorrow!
This morning I made mince pies with some assistance from Ady while Mum went up to Sainsburys and Dad and the kids watched Muppet Christmas Carol. Washed down with snowballs and Graham Norton on the radio it was all very lovely. After lunch we watched Polar Express and then I ran up a stocking (very oversized sock shape out of scrap white material) each for the kids on the sewing machine with Davies having a go at it. He was quite nervous of it at first and a bit jerky but got the hang of the pedal fairly quickly and I think would like to have a longer go another time. I have so much scrap material it would be great to let him loose on it and see what he creates. The kids then drew all over the blank stockings, both did excellent and very originally ‘them’ pictures which I must take a photo of tomorrow.
From about 330pm Scarlett was asking to go to bed 😆 After getting a pair of new pyjamas for Christmas Eve present every year since they were born yet always seeming surprised to open the present and find pjs Scarlett said yesterday ‘when we get our Christmas Eve pyjamas…’ but they were still excited about opening them 🙂 Both look very cute in pjs that fit again rather than ones half way up their legs. Scarlett commented on how very comfortable they are when they don’t cut into your waist, but followed that up with ‘but I don’t want to get rid of any of the ones I already have!’ 😆 New pjs in the sales though definitely!
Ady and I cooked dinner and chatted in the kitchen getting stuck into proper festive drinking and checking his friendfeed account online rather than on his phone finding lots of friend sub requests and returning them after he realised he was only seeing about half the threads I get on my phone. Not sure if it’ll last but he’s currently a convert to keeping up with people that way :).
We skyped Lynda and Stuart and then the kids did go to bed. They didn’t actually go to sleep until about 11pm but were at least in bed long before 9pm. Ady, Dad and I found yesterday’s Popmaster Grand Final on iplayer as we’d all missed it live. The result was as we’d expected but nice to have it confirmed. We caught the end of Outnumbered and then some other random stuff on TV at which point I went and sat with the kids for a while and read them Twas the night before Christmas.
Presents are now installed under the tree, each child’s resting on a sledge which is one of their presents but not worth wasting acres of paper to wrap. Hoping to get to use them at some point this year if not for sledging then for transporting things off the ferry up to the croft! 🙂 The hamster is tucked behind the sofa to come out once all other gifts have been opened.
Just as we went to bed I realised Mum & Dad were left up still chatting to each other fairly amicably (we fed them lots to drink but not to breaking levels 😉 see we can do responsible getting people drunk too!) and then Frazer and Kat walked in having been to church ( 😯 ) which is good as she’d walked out last night after they’d rowed too. Not sure if it’s Christmas magic or whether it simply bodes badly for the morning having parents with hangovers and noisy early awake kids and Kat here for potential stroppy Christmas morning-ness too but for now we’ll accept the festive glow of it all and pretend it’s a Love Actually moment 🙂
We’ve had a few more replies to our festive email sent to WWOOF hosts all of which have been very lovely and made us feel excited about what happens next. It’s odd being here crammed into this bedroom surrounded by all our stuff with no real idea of what we might be doing next or when but I’m very hopeful we’ll be in our own house somewhere next Christmas eve.