NotSheep

You can’t half tell who the hardened bloggers are - hands up all those who posted on Christmas Day?

And what does it say about me? - I’ve only been blogging a few months, yet I managed two posts (one including lots of photos) on Christmas Day, and I wrote half of this one before going to sleep last night. Frustrated writer or what?

How ironic that Freddy got a motion detector (he’d asked for spy gadgets for Christmas; that was one of them) when my need for it was so much greater…

Our Christmas dinner was the best we’d ever done. We made two kinds of stuffing (as well as the small quantity in the turkey roast), roast potatoes (done a la Delia), hot roasted veg (recipe from Sainsburys mag about nine years ago, it’s become a seasonal standard here, very yummy), honeyed sweet potato wedges, cocktail sausages, proper gravy… we had a small ham joint (because Scratchy’s not keen on turkey) and a small turkey roast (because Barney is keen on tradition).

(I’d love to go vegetarian again, but living with this lot? 8-O)

I think there was something else too, I’m just still too stuffed to think straight. And all of it was just right And even better, the whole lot took a total of less than two hours in the kitchen and half of that was on Christmas Eve

A special day for Toby - he’ll never have another first Christmas. A special Christmas for Freddy and George too, in a different way, since they’ve both given up their belief in The Guy (y’know who…) - though I suspect Freddy was still wavering about it until the events of the early hours of Christmas morning!

The family’s growing up, I suppose - out of seven of us, there’s one too young to understand and only one believer. Not entirely sure how I feel about that

Kids were great most of the day (the bit after 7.30 a.m., that is). A couple of slight wobbles here and there, but mostly terrific. Lots of helping each other and helping out; I’ve a good brood here really

Scratchy liked his pressies - clothes, and something for his desk at work - it’s got the mosaic of recent fave pics I posted, with a calendar on the bottom, all clad in a PaintShopPro fake picture-mat and a nice frame.

I like my pressies too, even if they weren’t exactly surprises - the aquarium, and a couple of bottles of shower-gel which have been living on the bathroom windowsill for the last couple of weeks.

The cats seemed rather disappointed to have to be outside while we ate - they spent most of it on the dining-room windowsill. We did let them in afterwards, and they did get the stuff off people’s plates, so don’t feel too sorry for them. The fish, on the other hand - well, I don’t think anyone fed them at all

Barney is now taller than my shoulder-height. I realised this a few days ago, but forgot to mention it until now. Not at all Christmas-related, but never mind.

There’s a K’nex games machine thing still sitting under the tree. The kids have noticed it, but not really absorbed its existence yet. I’ll pull it out when the novelty of everything else has worn off. They got the K’nex roller-coaster last year - they’re not cheap, these big kits, but they are fabulous - well-designed, and they make a really good family activity. We spent about three days putting the roller-coaster together last year, with everyone working on bits of it at various times. So when I saw the games thing this year for ?25, I couldn’t resist.

Christmas Crackers! - we had a great laugh over ours! They were good’uns! A hat, a joke and a small gift in each, all wrapped in silver and white stars that were hard to pull, and gave off an impressive bang Barney got nail-clippers in his - now he can stop stealing mine George got a hair decoration - so I said I’d swop whatever I got with him (me being the only person here with enough hair to put something in!) and I got a pack of mini-sized playing cards - which suited George very well, magpie that he is. Scratchy got a pen - he’s got a collection of not-quite-posh pens (you know the type of thing, usually made by companies like JMB LOL) so that was appropriate for him Jack got a small bag of marbles, tore it open, and spilled them all over the dining-room floor, leading to a chorus of “Johnny’s lost his marbles” from everyone else Freddy got a bottle-opener - and Jack decided he wanted to trade, because he thought it was for cutting cheese Once he discovered it wasn’t for cutting cheese, he insisted on swopping back though

We had the gifts in piles for individual people this year - I like it better when they’re all in a huge spread-out pile under the tree. It looks nicer, and it contains the mayhem, as well as making it last longer We hadn’t enough wrapped this year to do that. As soon as Toby is old enough to manage without me for a day, I’m doing next year’s Christmas shopping, and I’m going to have it wrapped before Hallowe’en. There, that’s my first resolution