Green Christmas

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, and keeps celebrating til the New Year!

Christmas here has been wonderful, and full of new traditions. On Christmas Eve, I had quite the busy day. In the morning, I was in the kitchen, making a double batch of my mom's stuffing. Tom experienced its deliciousness at Thanksgiving, and requested that I make it for the turkey as an alternative to a boxed mix. Absolutely nothing wrong with the boxed kind, but if you're not the biggest fan of sage, then something homemade is better. Anyway, we got all the ingredients the day before, and I put it all together so that Tom's sister could come pick up her portion in the early afternoon. Stuffing for two families' Christmas dinners, no pressure! It worked out quite well if I do say so myself, and I had to slap Tom's hand away more than once! While I was cooking, we watched A Muppet Christmas Carol, which also helped put me in a Christmassy mood.
After stuffing was finished, The Royal Ballet's version of the Nutcracker was on tv, so of course I had to watch it. Tom's dad disappeared for the duration, not being the biggest fan of ballet, and Tom played games with his headphones in to block out the glorious strains of Tchaikovsky... silly. When it finished after 2 hours of amazing-ness, I got myself ready to go out to the pub for Christmas Eve drinks after dinner (we had "Festive Fajitas"). We walked to the closest pub, The Cannon, with Tom's parents, and found the place absolutely packed out with festive revellers. After about 25 minutes, we lucked out and got a table, and had ourselves a few pints of bitter... mmm. We came home for 10 so that we could watch a Christmas special about a family who goes to Lapland for the holidays, and much to my delight, Sue lit her German candle-windmill for the first time!
When the show finished, we put out goodies for Santa Claus: a mince pie, gingery-drink, and a carrot for Rudolph. Then, I called my family to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, as they were all together at Auntie Kim's for our usual Christmas Eve get-together. Then, it was time for bed before Santa made his way to England from Senegal (according to NORAD).

As usual, I didn't sleep well Christmas Eve night, and was awake checking the time approximately every hour. Finally it was 8 o'clock, and time for Christmas to start. I got very spoiled by Tom's parents, and received lovely presents of bath things, pajamas, body cream, lip gloss, and a whole case of Cherry Coke! And from the boy himself, I also got spoiled with the 25th anniversary edition of Phantom on DVD (!!), a book about strange museums, things from Lush, another really interesting book called The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, and a "pet" (a little fluffy blue thing that looks like it's wiggling when you pull on his string, hard to explain) since I've mentioned wanting various pets (kitty, turtle, etc.) the whole year. After we opened our presents and gave Tom's parents theirs, Rob pulled a classic Christmas Story and said "there's one more present," bringing in a big box from the kitchen. Tom opened it- we got a new TV as a joint present! Lucky or what? It has a built in DVD player, can be hooked up to a computer or flash drive, and we can watch Freeview TV on it in Tom's room! Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled!

After all that excitement, we got dressed and went to Nat and Ian's. We saw all the kid's new presents, and gave and received some more. The highlight of the morning was Ian's face when he thought the TV box that contained smaller wrapped presents WAS the present, and his subsequently more disappointed face when he opened the box! We spent about an hour playing with the kids and their new toys, and then made our way to Mansfield to see Kev and Marie. We gave Olivia and Andrew their present, Pop Up Pirate, and played a few rounds (because apparently I missed out in childhood not playing it) before we headed back home to get dinner ready.

We had dinner promptly at 3 o'clock, and were joined by Tom's neighbour, Ann, who also happens to be his godmother. We pulled our luxury crackers, put on our hats and started to eat. Dinner was absolutely delicious, and the stuffing turned out great! I did my mom's recipe justice! After eating far too much, it was time for a turkey-coma induced nap for several hours before Christmas pudding and relaxed grazing until bedtime. We also fit the Doctor Who Christmas Special in there, which I must say was a slight disappointment, and didn't live up to last year's.

Boxing Day was another day of celebration, with everyone coming here to spend the day together. All five kids were very excited to play together, and had a few more presents to open- things that will stay at Grandma and Granddad's house to play with. We had the traditional Boxing Day meal at lunch time: turkey, chips, peas and a fried egg with red cabbage, and pulled more crackers. Then we played Charades (boys against girls) and the kids had a very dramatic treasure hunt for chocolate coins. Tom's grandma and her husband joined for the afternoon, and all the grownups had a lovely time chatting. We had a massive buffet of finger-foods and hors d'oeuvres for dinner time, and basically didn't stop eating the rest of the day. We all watched The Borrowers on BBC together at 7, and after Nat, Ian and the kids went home at 9, it was pretty much winding down time.

So, today is relaxation and turkey-risotto time after a busy but fantastic Christmas! New Year's next, ahh!

Love to you all, and Merry Christmas if I didn't get a chance to tell you!