Only 363 days left until Christmas!

I hope everybody out there had a great Christmas and are enjoying whatever they got whether they wanted them or not.

We had a nightmare/great Christmas; Christopher couldn't sleep Christmas eve, to the point he was crying at midnight because he was trying too hard to drift off. Of course that meant Father Christmas couldn't land so was stuck in a holding pattern over the house and, between you and me, Tamsyn and I were getting sick with tiredness. So at midnight we went to bed, setting the alarm for 2:00am when, thankfully, we found Christopher snoring fitfully and Zoe wide awake crying because Father Christmas hadn't been, even though she had been a good girl and gone to sleep like we told her. Long explanations ensued about how Santa (Father Christmas turns into Santa Claus as soon as he leaves British shores and heads towards the US) couldn't wait any longer or he would be too far behind schedule for all the American brats. Luckily he had left the presents boxed up downstairs, so we got Zoe off to sleep so (Super) Mummy and Daddy could sort it out.

Once finished we struggled to get back to sleep ourselves so at 4am we gave in and drank a nice cup of tea (I practically inhaled mine) while the children opened their stockings (pillow cases). We then all went back to sleep and woke up at 8:30am, the kids full of Christmas excitement and us feeling like we'd been out on the piss for four days solid.

Except for a feeling of complete weariness (itchy eyes, headache and extreme difficulty getting out of a chair if you make the mistake of sitting down) the rest of the day was lovely and went very smoothly - I had dropped the turkey off at Mums Saturday and they arrived at noon with it cooked and wrapped in towels. I had prepared the vegetables etc so we were able to sit down at 12:30 for the meal, before spending the afternoon seeing if we could cover every square inch of carpet with wrapping paper. Everybody was on their best behaviour (we were too tired to care though to be honest) so it was a nice relaxing day. They left at 5pm because they had horses to feed so we got the rest of the day to ourselves.

I promptly fell asleep and missed Doctor Who but, as I had expected something like that might happen, I had recorded it so I don't miss Kylie (who Tamsyn says was OK but not great).

I didn't realise quite how tired we had been until I woke up on Boxing Day feeling happy to be alive and with some energy. I thought I would take it easy all the same so we had a day of doing nowt i.e. watching 'family films' (children's DVDs) together and eating left over turkey...