Our Christmas.

Apparently I say to my friends every year that I’ve been more frugal this Christmas. And I never have been 🙂

Well, this year I wasn’t especially frugal in £’s but in present terms we went more minimalist. There weren’t really toys this year, only Josie and Bene got anything toy like at all; everyone else’s piles contained the more grown up gifts that they now prefer. We’d had an agreement that all of them would have a holiday of their own next year but plans change. Anyway, some relative had contributed and so some bigger presents were bought using the contributions. Maddy is still going to have her pgl holiday and Amelie is going to use 2 xmases to have an Acorn holiday if we can manage it. Fran traded in 2 months pocket money and her iPod for an iPad mini (lush, want!) and Amelie was delighted with a cheap but pretty purple camera, while Josie joined the 3ds gang. I quite liked presents from relatives this way, meaning that everything was wanted and needed, though Auntie Linda still trumped me with amazing stocking style boxes crammed with thoughtful gifts 🙂

The last two years we’ve watched the girls in the Christmas eve panto, i admit it would be weird not to have that now. This year Bene thought it was all quite strange (last year he vibrated through it in his waters!)

In lots of other ways our Christmas was a bit minimal too; panto and a weird end to the working period meant we didn’t put decorations up till the 21st. I managed the sad better than most years but I can’t say that Christmas spirit comes easily these days. Maybe when Bene is old enough to get excited. Even the girls went straight to sleep this year, which was novel.

This did mean Max and I got our jobs done early. I think we went to bed at 11!

 

I don’t seem to have taken any good photos of stocking opening. There were Ponds, wiggly things and smellies.

Father Christmas came… He brought onesies!

Something I loved was that all the girls did their own shopping for each other this year, rather than me providing gifts for them to wrap. It was very exciting and they put their gifts under the new, not happened before, downstairs tree. They gave them out at breakfast, long before their own main presents and it was just lovely.

This year will always be the year of the wolf hat and the wibbly pig 🙂

Siblings.

Present fun. With an iPad, Fran had to mostly be content with tiny things to unwrap, like a pretty fold and a t-shirt. She and Maddy loved the scrapbooking supplies I got them, I rewrapped the iPhone I had just ungraded for Maddy and put a smurf case on it. Heaven 😉

When I say it was a toned down Xmas in terms of tradition, I meant it. This was lunch 🙂

Perfect 🙂

Then I spent the afternoon nursing a bad back and doing these.

It was the best Christmas since Freddie died, it truly was. I was grateful for the lack of grief and pain and sad and Bene and all the girls were a joy. We spent good family time together, the delight at each of their ten parcels, Amelie’s excitement over a pile of fabric scraps to use with my machine. Lego, time together. I was happy. We even kept the decorations up longer than normal.

It’s just that… This. Sometimes forgetting for a while is very hard.