Christmas 2008

I am way behind with my blog posting. I am missing the Christmas post, my birthday post, and a post about 2008. I guess that happens with a newborn and three older kids in the house. So heres a brief account of the most amazing Christmas ever!

So Christmas Eve was our first with 4 stockings. Annabelle helped Emily hang up her stocking (not that Emily really knew anything about it) and Barney enthusiastically left out the mince pie, and carrot for Santa and Rudolf. It took Barney hours to get to sleep. He kept getting up to look out of the window, peeping for Santa. But the plus side of this was that he didn't wake up until 9am, so we had a nice lazy start to Christmas day.

Christmas Day itself was quite relaxing as we didn't have to make a dinner this year. Mum had invited the entire family round to hers, so we spent the morning lounging around in our PJ's whilst the kids opened their presents. (I spent much of the morning nursing Emiy too!)

The bigger kids both received a new mobile phone for Christmas along with various new clothes, hair accessories, sweets, chocolate and general teenage stuff. Annabelle enhanced her Nightwish collection with DVD of their music, patches to sew onto her jeans, and Nightwish stickers to decorate her room with. Jimmie received Lost series 2 and 3, and hasn't come out of his bedroom for days since as he is glued to the telly. Emily got a few little stocking fillers which Barney eagerly opened for her. Barneys most exciting present was a Gameboy, which has hardly left his hands since.

Christmas Dinner at Mums was divine! She cooked for 14 of us! The turkey was not just a turkey... it was a duck inside a turkey inside a goose... and it was mouth wateringly good. She spent something like 12 hours cooking it and was up to tend to it during the night, much like a newborn!

Dishing up time was a mammoth task and involved help from almost everybody. The adults all sat at the main table, the big kids sat up at the breakfast bar, and the little kids had a wee table of their own. Emily kindly slept through dinner time, just long enough for me to horse down my food before she needed nursing again. The food was just delicious (Thanks Mum!) and the company was the best.

Mum had a Christmas tree in her huge living room that was actually bigger than my house. It was massive. It doesn't look all that big in this photo because it's such a huge room. But it was a sight to behold. And underneath it were the most amazing hampers for each family that Mum must have spent weeks putting together. Our hamper was filled to overflowing with lots of different types of home made fudge, a huge box of home made truffles, home made spicy nuts and lots of other delights too. Dan was extremely taken with the big new saucepan that was included, and he hasn't come out of our kitchen since.


After every Christmas comes my birthday, and I am now another year older. This year we planned a quiet day, as I'm not yet recovered from my C-section, and am feeding Emily what seems every 5 minutes anyway.

Barney woke me up in the morning by bringing all my presents up to the bedroom. Traditionally we always open birthday presents on my big bed. Barney was even more excited than me and handed me each present, watching with enjoyment at every one I opened. They gave me a new HIM t-shirt, the new Dawn French book 'Dear Fatty', enough bath stuff to keep me clean for an eternity, and lots of other things too.

In the afternoon the midwife made her final visit to our house to discharge us from her care. At the end of her visit people started turning up at the house and I realised Dan had invited people round for my birthday, as a little surprise. He's so cute like that. So we had a nice lunch with family and friends and I got more prezzies! Barney helped me blow out the candles on my cake. Not quite sure why I had a big '2' candle on my cake though!

On that note, I must go, as Emily is awakening for yet another feed.