I have kind of grown out of that. I woke at the much more reasonable hour of 3.30 this year. As I am older and much more mature, I pottered on the interwebs for a bit, took a good decongestant for my permanently blocked nose and went back to bed. I didn't get anybody up and I haven't poked or given a present a shake before the allowed time in years. I certainly have stopped roaming the house in search of hidden present to discover and shake.
Julio guards these presents. He knows what I'm like.I just get excited. I'm like that. I am able to control my excitement better now that I'm in my mid-forties, but I still buy into the build up to Christmas.
Christmas Morning and George is happy!
The Santa hat is a family tradition. One person is "Santa" on Christmas morning and passes the presents out. The gifts are then opened one by one. Everybody admires each gift before the next one is retrieved from the tree.
Here he is using his new looping station and wearing his new trendy hat.
Henry received a lovely new shelf to keep all his 45" singles up off the floor. Before the shelf, these little records were stored behind the door in teetering piles. From time to time, Julio would topple them as he jumped into the window sill. The records would then have to be re-stacked.
Look! His shirt matches the record label! Imagine that! Merry Christmas Berry Gordy!
Please note the attention to getting the records into alphabetical order by artist. The records are being judged by the three kings plus Jay and Silent Bob.
Momma got the nicest gift, a new dry suit for diving!!! I can't wait to use it. I wonder if our dive club is doing a New Year's Day dive! I'll have to ring around. Putting it on for the first time was like going through a re-birthing ceremony. You have to use a lot of talcum powder to get your hands and head through the super tight seals. The neck seal on this suit is so chokey that my face went all red and puffy (not a good look for me). So when the camera was taken out, I immediately grabbed the neck seal and pulled it open a bit so I didn't look like a tomato in the picture.
Both Polly and Julio got new collars. Polly says that the red is much nicer than the old black collar. The black one was too butch for her.Later on in the day . . . .
Cheese and nibbles are set out while I cook the Christmas dinner at a calm and leisurely pace and the guys listen to music and watch the telly.
Here is a close up (and sadly out of focus - I blame the copious amount of champagne and orange juice I was drinking) detail of the beautifully decorated Christmas cake.Occasionally they are called upon to do some menial task and at about 6pm we sit down to dinner.We had Winter Vegetable Cobbler and a very small stuffed turkey roll for me. There were Brussel sprouts, roast potatoes, cranberry sauce and plum pudding with brandy butter. Actually we now refer to the brandy butter as vodka margarine as we remember the best Christmas special known to man, Bottom Christmas Special - no YouTube embed available for this - blast the BBC!!
This is the chaos that is our table after Christmas dinner. 
Under the table are the corpses of a dozen Christmas crackers.Joke from the crackers: Question - What do ghosts eat for dinner. Answer - Goulash
It is my belief that it is the traditions a family has at Christmas that children remember more than any lavish gift they may receive. We do our best to create fun traditions that the kids are happy to carry with them to their own families in the fullness of time. The three of us had a wonderful day. I hope that this was the case for you too.
God Bless and Merry Christmas!
1 comment:
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