A little late...

Well seeing as our Christmas photos have now been uploaded I thought I'd write a little Christmas post :) And thank you for the comments the other day, I felt the blog was due a change, and trying to get the weather to brighten up by putting a spring theme on it ;)

Having 3 lots of grandparents (the kids' not ours!) to fit in seeing, meant that we had four "christmasses" this year! We spent Christmas Eve at the in-laws, as they were going to Jonathan's sister for Christmas Day. We spent Christmas Day together as a family, and then on Boxing Day headed down to Kent to see my parents over a couple of days. We only have photos up til Christmas Day right now so I will have to just post those :)

Christmas 2011 had us feeling like it crept up on us yet again - and so stressed out was I that I didn't bother sending out any Christmas cards, but only gave some to family who we were seeing over Christmas. I made a selection of cards and they turned out rather well! I did use Christmas card templates, so they weren't entirely my own doing, but I would like to do my own this year!

The photo I used of the boys was an old one, because it was the nicest one of the two of them I had together. Christopher was probably about 8 months old here.


Christmas Eve was quite nice and relaxed. We let the boys play during the morning, while my mother-in-law was cooking a delicious Christmas dinner :) Robert enjoyed having his grandad read him a book on sea creatures. He loves the Octonauts which is a cbeebies cartoon about animals who live under the sea in a giant "octopod" helping out the sea creatures when they are in trouble, so he enjoys reading about different sea animals.



This lovely photo of the 3 generations, my two boys, their daddy, and his daddy! :)



Then came the lovely Christmas dinner. The boys loved it, and more surprisingly, they both loved the crackers, AND the party poppers!! I thought they'd be a little scared of the big bangs, but they were fine!



"What do I do with this Dad? This doesn't look like turkey!!"


Robert struggling to pull his cracker, so grandad did it ;)


After the very filling dinner, came presents time! Robert was SOO keen to get stuck in, I think he'd unwrapped most of his presents before Christopher had opened even one! They were such lucky boys over Christmas, and it was nice that they got their presents spread over 4 days. Here they are opening some of their presents from Grandma and Grandad.







We decided to head up to the village park after presents, and got some photos of the boys in their new matching jackets (these are the very first identical clothes the boys have, it's not a habit we are intending to continue, particularly, but it was cute seeing them both in the same clothes! And wow, Christopher just looks so tiny here! He is somewhere between the 9th and 25th centile for height and weight, whereas Robert is just above the 75th for weight and 91st for height! I tried to tell various people to get Robert age 4-5 (despite just having turned 3) and no-one did.... the age 3-4 DOES fit him with a bit of room, but age 4-5 would have been a bit better for growth! Where-as everyone bought Christopher age 12-18 month or 18-24 month... the jacket was 12-18 and still somewhat swamps him!! He has a bunch of 18-24 month stuff he got for his birthday which he might JUST be about to wear when he turns 2, unless he has a massive growth spurt between now and then! :) Anyway, photo! We had to get Christopher up in the middle of the room, make him clap (haha bless him) and then make Robert join in, to get this shot!



Just after this photo was taken, poor Christopher had a fall in the hallway, and cut his lip and a bit of his mouth too, where the gum joins the lip at the top, there was a cut which just kept on bleeding. I was surprised at how quickly he settled down, I did nurse him for a while afterwards because he seemed quite tired, and wondered if he would go to sleep but he didn't, so I quickly strapped him into my new(ish) meitai, and went to catch up with Jonathan, Robert and Betsy who had already started off.

Hugely cute photos of Christopher toddling around the park here, wearing a little beanie hat which was rather low down and almost covered his eyes hehe! You can see the little cut on his bottom lip here! (or it might have been dried blood I'm not sure!)




And then it was lifted up a bit and wasn't quite as cute! (But still pretty cute!)


After getting back, Robert (well, Jonathan, really) played with Robert's new meccano set, and Robert then played with the aeroplane Jonathan made ;) Christopher, who hadn't napped apart from in the car that morning on the way over, finally nursed to sleep, and we laid him out on the floor for his nap.




We had tea, then headed home after their bath. Once both boys were asleep we set about putting the presents under the tree. We are not "doing" the whole Father Christmas thing, that is, saying he brings the presents, and comes in the night while they are sleeping. We are not going to say he *doesn't* exist though, so if they choose to believe when they are older, they can, and we are going to try and do our utmost to make sure they treat other children's beliefs with respect. The challenge this year was building up excitement without "Father Christmas" and it was quite difficult. I am hoping that next year, Robert will remember more what Christmas is about (and yes, he does also have a Christmas book about the real meaning!) so will be excited by default! There are lots of Christmas traditions that it would be nice to include as years go on, and finding our own special lot of these is the amazing thing about being a family! Anyway, our tree, with presents all ready for the morning!



The big one at the back right was a dolls house for the boys!! When morning came, Robert came into our room, climbed up to nurse as usual, and then Jonathan said "yay! It's Christmas! Do you want gah-gee or do you want to go downstairs and open presents?!!" And for once, gah-gee wasn't the preferred option ;)

We only seem to have a picture of them playing with the dolls house, but they had sooo many presents, it's so hard finding room for them all!




We had just such a lovely lazy day with the boys, playing on the playstation (Robert loves the new Toy Story PS3 game!), playing with all their new toys with them, and Jonathan did a looooo-oooverly Christmas dinner (mark 2!). I am so thankful to have a husband who can, and is willing to, cook :) Although these days, there's not a lot into cooking a roast dinner, seeing as you can buy practically everything frozen and ready to just plonk into the oven at the right time ;) But the bits he did do from scratch were lovely! We were just all so stuffed, but it was lovely being together and just having a lovely lazy day!

I'm sure I'll update about the days spent with my family later once we have photos!