.Christmas 2009.

Christmas just seems to get more and more fun the older my children get. Every year they "get it" a bit more and are extra excited. This year Oscar was really excited...lucky for us he isn't a 4:30am waker, like some other children I know (YUCK!) and we got a lovely sleep in until 7:30am on Christmas morning!

The celebrations begin on Christmas Eve for our family. We seem to have this habit of making special holidays drag on as long as we can (Easter Bunny visits our home for four days over the Easter weekend!). A few years ago we decided to have our hot roast meal on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day. It works out really well, means that we can spend Christmas Eve together as a family and also that there isn't as much hot, busy cooking and cleaning to do on Christmas Day and we can all relax and enjoy it a bit more.

This year was a quiet Christmas for us, just Mum & Dad, Ty & Cade and our clan. It was nice though, I think Christmas is fun as long as you have kids around! We had our yummy roast turkey and ham meal on Christmas Eve and were totally and utterly stuffed for the rest of the night. Each year on Christmas Eve, Santa drives around our town on the back of a fire engine with carols blaring and throws lollies at the people waiting in the street. Lil thought this was the best thing ever and I think if this is all that happened for Christmas she would have been very happy! She has not stopped talking about how "Santa got my lollies" ever since! Check out Ty and Cade in the photo below - they had just spotted Santa coming up the street...yes, they are 19 and 22!!
Poor old Dad has warped sense of taste since being on new medication for his removed thyroid. Everything tastes metallic to him, but that didn't stop him getting excited about the big pav for dessert!
We woke up to a glorious Christmas day...sun streaming through the windows, we've had some yucky weather for Christmas the last few years so it was really nice to enjoy the day this year. Oscar and Lil were so excited to open their presents from Santa in the morning. We have a tradition of the kids opening the presents from Santa when we all get up and then waiting until around lunch time to open the presents from everyone else under the tree - yep, spreading out the fun again...
Mum, Dad and the boys came around for a gourmet breakfast - have you ever seen white raspberries? Check them out! They taste exactly the same as red ones, just a different colour. They reminded me a bit of maggots, but are really yummy!
I was a mean Mum and after we had read the Christmas story I made the kids sit in front of the tree for a photo! Oscar was not impressed!!! He had waited so patiently all morning though, I can't blame him!
Lil gave us a great Christmas present and has been toilet training on and off for the last couple of weeks. I held out buying her undies (yes, she wore Oscars!) though because I knew she would be really happy to open some on Christmas day - and she was! She has been really good and going to the toilet for the last 4 days - YAY! Hope she keeps it up, will be great to only have one in nappies!
Check out the t-shirt that Ty bought for Cade...go Twilight!
Oscar is crazy about all things Lego at the moment and was so happy to get three little sets. He it totally into building things and always chooses lego, train tracks, duplo, etc. over any other toys to play with.
And I had to post a picture of Lil with her Giddy-Up horse...she loves it and look at her new gold shoes (I really want a pair for me!) she will not take them off and stops to stare at them every couple of minutes! So completely cute!! Oscar likes his horse too but wouldn't open it up when it was present time. I asked him why not and he said it was because he already knew what it was and told me it was a horse. I asked him how he knew and he said "because I saw it on your blog" - WHAT THE?! Apparently he was walking by the computer when I was writing the blog post about them - I didn't even know that he knew what a blog was!!
After the presents we went down to the beach for a swim and a play, then home for the little ones to have a nap. Followed by an early dinner of cold meats, prawns, salads, cheeses, dips, breads, fruit and other yummy goodies! It was such a fun day - definitely goes too fast, but I guess it wouldn't be as exciting if Christmas came more than once a year! We are lucky to have Jaron home for a bit over a week now so really looking forward to enjoying some fun activities together as a family.