Davies and Scarlett took forever to go to sleep on Christmas Eve, I remember being much the same at their age. Finally they went to sleep about 1130pm so we brought all the presents down, put them under the tree, filled their stockings and replaced them at the ends of their beds and went to bed ourselves around midnight. Typically I then couldn’t sleep and it felt like I’d barely dropped off when Scarlett came thundering in, turned all the lights on and said ‘It’s Christmas Day! Father Christmas has been!’. She asked if she could start opening the presents in her stocking and we blearily agreed. Ady asked me what time it actually was and when I checked and it wasn’t yet 3am we told her it was still Christmas Eve night after all and she should go back to sleep. Rather pleasingly she did :).
Ady then snored, the cat came and slept on our bed and purred noisily and I laid awake for a bit longer before finally falling asleep and then being woken just after 7am by the children again. Ady went and put the kettle on and I watched (without the aid of contact lenses, so very blurrily) and listened as they opened all the bits in their stockings. A combination of very grateful children and parents who know them pretty well meant they had done well :).
We came downstairs at about 8am and present-opening proper began in earnest. Davies has the rip the paper off everything as quick as possible and look at it properly later approach, whereas Scarlett is quite methodical and savours the opening, the still having a pile to go and the looking at things in detail.
They both had a vast array of stuff thanks to charity shop hauls, Ady getting to go into Tesco and Sainsburys staff shops for heavily discounted end of lines, damaged packaging type bargains and us buying things throughout the year. Aswell as a big selection of art materials, craft kits, Star Wars and Doctor Who figures, books and more Davies got a W&G book
he’d been coveting, a similar to a flic camera but much cheaper little video camera and loads of other things. Scarlett got an Eyeclops
We drank bucks fizz, ate toast and chocolate and Davies played a new xbox game while Scarlett did some watercolour painting. Finally it was time to head over to my parents.
We didn’t necessarily have a Merry Christmas there but it was certainly inkeeping with traditional family Christmases of my childhood. I probably won’t say too much more about that really but we did have some laughs.
We were home again for 8pm, the kids were chased into bed, although they didn’t sleep for ages, infact I was asleep before them as I was utterly drained and took myself off a little after 11pm, which for me is a very early night.
Today we’ve stayed home all day. Watched many films, Herbie, Bridge to Terabithia, Flushed Away and more, done various craft kits including animal puppets, Ben 10 shaker maker, Star Wars make your own comic, watercolour painting, plasticine and more. And eaten. And drunk. Lots and lots of festive food and drink.
Merry Christmnas to you all. 3am bit made me laugh!