Christmas Day 2011

Hello! Happy Boxing Day! How was your Christmas?

Aside from all the lovely parts of Christmas, there's always something that sticks in my mind from each year. Christmas 2009 was the year I was 39 weeks pregnant with Toby and ginormous. Christmas 2010 was the year my Mum's oven broke on Christmas Eve so everyone had Christmas lunch at ours (and my Dad dropped the leftover turkey on the snowy pavement outside the house!). Christmas 2011 was the year that people were ill and I had no sleep.

There were still many good bits though, so let's focus on those! I last posted on Christmas Eve just before our "DVD night". We started the tradition last year that on Christmas Eve we all get new PJs and rent a DVD to watch. Izzy was really looking forward to it again this year.

We opened our PJs before Toby went to bed...

For some reason I was the only one who ended up with Christmassy PJs!

and then once he'd gone to bed we watched Tangled (Izzy's choice, Liam and I also watched Hangover 2 once she was asleep) and ate lots! :)

Baked Camemberts, baguette, carrots, grapes and caramelised onion chutney.

Toffee popcorn :)

After Tangled was finished, Izzy went to bed. Well, after she'd written notes for Santa and his elves that is!

I helped her with a few words for the "elves" letter, hence 'dire' changing to 'dear'!!

On Christmas Day morning, Toby had me awake at 5.15am. Yawn. We didn't go downstairs until Izzy woke at 6.30am (and then we woke Liam up too). Look what was waiting for the children downstairs...

Izzy was super excited to see what Santa had left, whereas Toby, same as last year, was more interested in the part-eaten carrot Rudolph had left behind!

Once we'd finished looking at all the little stocking presents, it was time for breakfast. Part-bake pain au chocolats (I buy them frozen from Waitrose, we normally have croissants too but apparently they sold out of those weeks ago!).

After breakfast, it was time to open the presents under the tree. Everyone seems to have different ways of doing presents at Christmas. Here, Santa leaves little, unwrapped, presents in the stockings and then the wrapped presents under the tree are from us and family/friends. Despite taking it in turns and opening the presents (I thought!) quite slowly, we were finished opening all our presents by 8.45am!! Shows how early we were up I guess!

Izzy received a Zhu Zhu play set from Liam's sister, and then more Zhu Zhus to go with it from us, my Mum and my Grandma...an expensive business keeping Zhu Zhus!! ;)

As you can see, we also gave her a Sleeping Beauty outfit which she immediately changed into and then stayed in for the rest of the day!

Toby loves his Mr Potato Head...thanks Sarah!

Once we'd finished opening presents, we spent the morning watching Anastasia...love having children as an excuse to watch all my old favourite films!! :-D

At 11.30am, all of my family came round. My Mum had woken up on Christmas Day feeling really unwell (illness #1) yet still managed to carry on, cook Christmas lunch etc. She brought nibbles round to us too, despite not being able to face the thought of eating them herself, bless. Mum brought maple roasted sausages (my sister's favourite), blue cheese pate (leftover from our wedding) on pitta and a delicious avocado salsa to go with tortilla chips. I also set out some sweeter things to nibble at...

Love peanut M&Ms!

And then, after some Bucks Fizz, it was time for present round #2. Safe to say the children have no need for anymore new toys until next year!!

My Dad with Toby, who had just woken up from a nap so was a little bewildered!!

Closest we got to all looking at the camera!

Huge doll my Mum got Toby...uh, thanks?!! ;)

Izzy's doll from my Dad is thankfully considerably smaller!!

After my family had left, we headed over to Liam's parents' house for (late) Christmas lunch. Liam's Mum had bought me the nut roast wellington from Waitrose, which has goats cheese and apricot in the centre, yum! I also had roast potatoes and parsnips (all cooked in oil) and boiled carrots and leeks.

After lunch it was time for the 3rd and final round of present opening!

Liam's Dad with Toby

Liam's Mum and Nan (not the one who is still, unfortunately, in hospital)

Princess Izzy :)

The children were getting very tired, so we went back to ours about 5pm. I love having all our family so close by that we can see them without having to stay too long. Both children were in bed by 6pm, they'd been really good but it was a long day!

Once they were in bed, I made myself a snack plate of some of the leftover treats I made for gifts.

PB truffles, a brownie and cranberry coconut almonds...all delicious!

I also took a few photos of some of my favourite foodie presents to share with you all!

My littlest sister bought my present in Selfridges, aka American goodies!! I was so excited by these! My Mum did comment that not many people would get excited by Lucky Charms, but I love them!

Some brightly coloured chopping boards and bowls to go with our new knives...

and the River Cottage Veg Every Day cookbook from Liam's Mum...

plus lots of other lovely presents like tickets to see Phantom of the Opera from my Mum, gift cards, earrings and my new laptop which I am currently using - makes uploading presents a lot easier! We were all so lucky and received many generous presents. It was also really nice to spend so much time with family, a great day :)

Unfortunately, from about 8pm things took a turn for the worse. It is not uncommon for Izzy to play in her room after we've put her to bed, but when we heard her singing (!) I went to investigate. I crept up the stairs and quickly turned on the light, expecting to catch her playing. Instead I found her still in bed, cheeks soaking from crying :( she said she had an ear ache so we gave her calpol and persuaded her to try to go to sleep. No joy. In the end, both Liam and I stayed up with her until 11.30pm when she did drift off so we went to bed. Bearing in mind I'd been up at 5.15am, I passed out and Liam, bless him, got up a few times with Izzy from then until 3.30am. At 3.30 I took over and ended up "sleeping" in her room for the next 4 hours. Not that much sleeping happened - every 10 minutes or so she woke up to say either "my ear hurts Mummy", "I'm sorry Mummy", "I can't sleep Mummy" or the best one, at about 5 in the morning (!) "when are we going to take the Christmas tree down Mummy?" !!! At 7.15am I gave up and said she could play in her room, and I crawled back to bed. Next thing I knew I was waking up at 10am - Liam had taken the children downstairs so I could get a little sleep...thank you Liam!! :) Izzy seems ok today - still complaining of slight ear ache but not too bad. Both her and Toby have been asleep for the last 2 hours, she needed it! As well as the ear ache, I think she just ate way too much sugar yesterday. She was constantly picking at chocolates, toffee popcorn etc and Liam says that during his "shift" in the night, she was thrashing about, hitting her arms and legs on the walls etc because she was so agitated even when asleep. She's also now got lots of little red "spots" on her face so I'm guessing that's also related? I'm kind of glad Christmas only happens once a year!!

Despite the above paragraph though, I would call Christmas 2011 a big success. I just hope I get some sleep tonight!

What was your favourite part of Christmas Day? And what was your favourite present that you gave and/or received? I surprised Liam with a 6 month subscription to LoveFilm. It was a Groupon so I managed to buy it for really good value, and he is so happy. He loves watching films, and now understands why I kept trying to persuade him to ask relatives for things other than DVDs!!