True to my word this morning we had Christmas carols in the car AND we picked up advent calendars for the kids today too, chocolate ones unfortunately but they do have proper festive pictures on them.
It’s Julie’s birthday today – 40! So we went over to look after Jack, Maisie and Lorna while Chris and Julie went out for lunch to celebrate and have a couple of hours to themselves. It was nice being in their house chatting while the kids played, a much more soothing atmosphere than my parents. The kids were all fairly self sufficient and we did very little other than be in the house alongside them really.
Chris and Julie came home having really enjoyed their lunch and we had a cup of tea with them and Julie’s mum who arrived shortly after they got back before heading off. We would have stayed longer and indeed there was birthday cake on offer once it had defrosted but Davies had a sudden reaction to something and his eyes started swelling at a rather scary rate and he was sneezing with streaming eyes and nose. His tongue and throat were fine but it was quite alarming. He recovered very quickly once we left and confessed that it had been triggered by a pillow fight with Jack using the sofa cushions. I guess this confirms some sort of dust mite allergy which I had suspected anyway for him as he so often wakes snotty in the mornings.
We dropped Davies and Scarlett home with my Dad as he’d agreed to have them for a couple of hours while we popped out to finish birthday shopping for Tarly. She is getting a camera from my parents for joint Christmas and birthday gift but aside from some playmobil sets she has marked in the catalogue doesn’t really want anything else. This makes her really hard to buy for. She likes animals, books, soft toys but really she has pretty much all of those a girl could have. We’ve got her various playmobil animals off ebay as all she really wants is the little animals not all the other plastic accessories that go with them, an assortment of books and a couple of films I know she wants to watch. I’m still fairly stumped for her for Christmas really, particularly as this time last year we were culling all our possessions and losing the tat so the last thing I want to do is replace it all this year. What she’d love more than anything in the world is a pet and sadly that is the one thing we just can’t do until life is a little more settled.
So, the rounds of supermarkets and Toys R Us, where I briefly contemplated suicide – what a hellish place! Then home again. Dad bought fish and chips for dinner for everyone.
So birthday sorted, Christmas music playing and the countdown to camp commences.