Peace

Merry Christmas All, I hope you have had a wonderful time. We have had a very relaxed Christmas and I for one am very pleased about it.

On Christmas Eve we had a lovely dinner together, a tradition I started when the 2 older children were small and had Christmas lunch with their Dad every alternate year. It was a way for us to make sure we had a celebratory feast as a family. Then Duncan, Oscar and I went to the Christmas Eve service at church, which was quite lovely and Oscar really enjoyed. When we came home it was after 8pm, so it was time for bed (for Oscar), so we put out our carrot and milk and mince pie for Santa and the reindeer. Daddy still thinks Santa should get a brandy or a whiskey, but Mama thinks we shouldn't encourage drink driving, I can see this debate coming up every year again ;)

Oscar slept until 8.15am on Christmas morning, which I doubt will happen every year, so we took full advantage of it. When we came downstairs he was a bit afraid to come into the lounge and asked me to go first in case Santa was still there, he is a bit afraid of the big guy. I have to say he was fairly chilled about the presents, handing them around one at a time and having me help him open his (manic and frenzied paper ripping may come when he is older, I am not sure though). The unsurprising hit was the ELC wooden tower which we bought him (opting for this instead of a large Noddy Car, although we did get him a small Noddy car).

My eldest son came to see us at 10.30am and we opened more gifts and Oscar enjoyed having his big brother around (we don't see Christopher all that often, much to my regret).

Christmas dinner was at 3pm and ran very smoothly. There were 8 of us in total and everyone said it was very tasty. Even my Mum noticed how chilled I was and commented on how amazingly relaxed I was considering I had just served a feast for 8 people by myself.

As is customary, we all spent the rest of day trying to get our food to digest, sipping champagne and watching the children play.

I can only hope that every Christmas will be as peaceful as this one.