Skip to main content

Merry Christmas! 2023

Merry Christmas to you all! Didn't it feel as if everyone put their Christmas lights up really early this year? We put our tree up on 3rd December, and felt quite behind the times. Still, that was the day it snowed, so at least it was seasonal. After that it poured with rain for the rest of December.


As if to compensate for the early Christmas lights, the school term insisted on running up to the 22nd. The boys were barely staggering in for the final weeks. I had a very busy last week at cafe (record takings!) so I was pleased to reach the end, too.

Plus, I'd rashly booked in new carpet to be fitted on the 21st. That meant taking up the old stair carpet and the one in Toby's room, painting all the skirting boards, and clearing out Toby's furniture. Then replacing it all in time for Graham's mum to occupy the spare room the next day. It'll be fine, I said.


 
out with the old...

Well, it was. With grateful thanks to Graham's friends Rich and Simon, who came over on Wednesday evening and helped us pull up carpet and move a bed, and to my parents, who came over on Thursday and helped trim the doors and put Toby's room back together. And the new carpet looks lovely.


...and in with the new!

We fitted in our usual traditions: the Illuminations at Lichfield Cathedral, and the Christingle service at Findern church. Graham sang in the choir for the carol service at our church. I pushed small children in roughly the right direction at the nativity service. There was a mix-up with the angels, and a last-minute panic about the innkeeper, but Herod put on an excellent show of evil plotting.

with Graham's mum at Lichfield Cathedral

I made a Christmas cake, of course. I loved this pudding design I found - very simple and effective.


Christmas Day felt like lots of cooking, but in a relaxed kind of way. Breakfast was cinnamon Christmas bun, inspired by this Waitrose recipe. Definitely one to remember! Vegetable soup for lunch, and the full turkey dinner later on. Graham's mum was here for several days, and my parents came over for Christmas day, so we had seven of us round the table.

Christmas breakfast table

Toby and Theo voted this one of the best Christmases for gifts. This was partly because they both got a phone. But also new clothes, Lego sets, Amazon vouchers, and much more. We spread out the present opening over the day, at their request, and they were very appreciative of everything they got.


And so were we. After a difficult year, and with so many people around the world still struggling, it was a blessing to have a safe, healthy, friends-and-family-filled Christmas time. And a good rest.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

Baby Language

For some reason baby equipment is an area in which American English differs markedly from British English. As well as learning how to care for a baby, we had to learn a whole new vocabulary! Fortunately we are now fluently bilingual, and I have compiled a handy US-UK baby dictionary for you. Diaper n. Nappy Mom says if you can read this change my diaper. The first time you change one of these you will be all thumbs and stick the little adhesive tabs to yourself, the baby and probably the changing mat before you get them where they ought to go. A few years later you will be able to lasso a running toddler and change them before they even know what's happened (yes, I have seen it done). You will also get through more diapers than you ever thought possible, creating scary amounts of expense and waste. Hence we are now mostly using: Cloth diaper n. Reusable nappy Cool baby. No longer those terry squares, the main drawback is that there are now so many types it can be qu...
5 comments
Read more

Palm Sundae

I stumbled across the idea of palm sundaes for Palm Sunday on another blog I read, and decided it was something we had to try. Of course, whenever I think of these things, I somehow picture us all sitting happily at the table enjoying our dessert after a stress-free dinner, and then calmly reading the story of Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem and possibly even discussing it a little. Well.  Maybe in ten years. What actually happened was Toby insisting that he didn't like any of his dinner and refusing to eat it for about an hour.  Which meant that he didn't get any dessert.  Meanwhile Theo, who was supposedly fast asleep upstairs, started wailing the second I put the plates on the table (which he does every. single. dinnertime.  I wasn't kidding about that extra-sensory device ).  After much baby feeding, phone answering, Toby disciplining, toilet taking and even garage tidying, Graham and I finally got our dinner eaten and sat down to our Palm Sunday rea...
3 comments
Read more