Precious Christmas Moments

We had a lovely Christmas!  I was pathetic at taking photos though and only took them (when I remembered) on my phone, so they are not great quality.  I need to get back into the habit of snapping everything in sight 🙂

Anyway, without further ado, this is what I did manage to capture.  First up, Christmas eve and the opening  of the Christmas jammies:

Much to the girls’ delight and Thomas’ disgust, we managed to get them matching onesies with Christmas trees on:

I managed to persuade Thomas to have one photo taken in them 🙂  He wears them each night so I’m thinking he doesn’t mind them too much.  At the other end of the spectrum was Charlotte, who wanted to wear hers to go shopping in!

We did our yearly biscuit decorating competition.  Rivalry was rife and even Thomas and Gary got into the spirit of it all:

We added a new element this time, prolonging the hilarity.  Each person had to present their own nativity scene and say why they thought they should win:

We then took a vote for our two favourite.  It was an anonymous vote to prevent any pressurising and rigging of the results 🙂  Hey, this is serious stuff.  Mine was clearly the winner, I mean, I even included Mary’s afterbirth in the form of a red ribbon.  I was certain I would win:

But alas, no-one seemed to appreciate my attention to detail and B6 was the allotted winner.  Bah, humbug!  Speaking of which, we then set up to watch our yearly rendition of the Muppets Christmas Carol.  Gary and I have been watching this every year for the whole 20 years of our marriage.  We practically know it off by heart:

Needless to say, Gary fell asleep 🙂

Christmas day, we were woken by excited children and a cup of coffee at 830am.  Personally, I would have preferred 10 or even 11, but apparently that is not the done thing on Christmas day when there are stockings to open  😉  The children opened their stockings whilst listening to Christmas carols playing in the back-ground.  It was perfect…or so I’m told.  I’m not known for being fully conscious so early in the morning.  It wouldn’t have surprised me if I had fallen asleep (I didn’t – I’m not that bad a parent!):

After I’d chucked the turkey in the oven, said a quick prayer that it would cook in time and faffed about a bit more in the kitchen, still not fully compos-mentis, we gathered once more in the living room for a big surprise Gary had got everyone.  Christmas Jumpers….which flashed and sung Christmas songs:

I’m not sure if the fun for Gary was buying a snazzy jumper for everyone or embarrassing his son to even greater depths than I had reached with his very Chrismassy onesie!  Teens are SO much fun!  Needless to say, he was highly unimpressed, but because he is a great boy he took it in his stride and posed for a family selfie as well as wearing it for Boxing Day at Granny’s.  Oh, and we bought one for Granny too.  She was delighted.  It would go with her Mrs Santa costume she wore a couple of years ago!

The turkey did cook in time and we all enjoyed a traditional Christmas Lunch with all the trimmings:

Afterwards we unwrapped the rest of the presents and played a few games.  One of them, Mouth Trap, was a complete hoot:

The photos make me smile just looking at them 🙂

And there endeth the photos I took.  I need to get into the habit of taking my camera everywhere I go so I can snap our lives with a bit more clarity than my phone is able.  No matter.  We had a glorious time, with lots and lots of family time (Gary was off for almost two weeks) and gatherings with friends.  Just how I like it.