In which I have many Christmasses and one New Year

Happy New Year and Happy Christmas!

I took Christmas and, let's be honest, most of December too, off from blogging. I rarely touched the Internet whilst I was in the North so I missed sharing the joy of Christmas with my blog-reel back then. I would like to do it now: Happy Christmas!

I was having a wonderful time hanging out with family and doing all that traditional stuff. It was the first year that Andy and I celebrated Christmas day in the same place and so meant a lot to me. We didn't just have one present-opening-ceremony-day though: we managed to have four! Oh I know, it's not all about the presents before you spot my self-interest. I love the family and the food and the endless board games (even if trivia games make me feel sulky.) Why should I know the Australian Prime Minister in 1991? Or which bottle of beer has a 'laughing cavalier' on the bottle? I do hate games where the outcome is predetermined. Where one person has all the knowledge and no amount of skill or luck will let you overtake them. I do LOVE board games though and we did play many others and even got four more for Christmas.

Anyway, the point is I'm not going to pretend not to love getting presents either. I do. I am unabashadly materialistic and capitalist at times. I love ripping open Christmas paper and seeing what joy lies beneath. And I revel in the happiness of friends and family when you get them something perfect, that spot-on gift you were searching for.

So we had Christmas #1 at our house, before travelling northwards to my parents. As we were going to spend the 25th with my clan Andy's parents gave us presents in advance. Rather than carry them all the way to Yorkshire to open on the day and then bring back down -when our suitcases are going to be full anyway - we decided to make a thing of opening them the night before we travel north. Hence, Christmas number 1.

I wanted us to have a special romantic night opening up there presents and celebrating the last year. We wanted to buy a tree and loads of decorations and go the whole hog, but despite both having jobs at last we couldn't really afford to do that, and we ended up not even having time. So (as I work part time) I set the scene up for Andy coming home from work with just a few sprinkles of Christmas about the place.

I had two Playmobil Christmas set-ups. One in the bedroom: the modern Christmas family, shown above. One in the living room: the nativity, shown below. It's the first time I have put all these bits together like this.

 

We didn't have a tree in the end. So I put my little Playmobil one in the middle of our presents at our house...

...and shown again to scale

Bannan-splits for dessert. The plates are from a dinner set I got in the presents shown above. Put to use immediately!

I cooked us spaghetti carbonara and had red wine for me and root beer and cream soda for Andy. It was such a wonderful romantic evening. I think we played Magic: The Gathering after dinner and felt like real grown-ups.

Then we had Christmas Day itself: with all the carol-singing, royal-speech-watching, Doctor Who-squeeing, cake-baking, mulled-wine concocting, roast-turkey-dinner eating and Articulate-playinga person could wish for.

I then got to see my extended family for another massive Christmas-type dinner at a carvery (with some more presents).

Plus yesterday we went off to Andy's folk for New Years (and some more gifts) and being sorely beaten at Canasta.

I apologise if this particular blog entry feels more like a child's 'what I did on my holidays' school project than an entertaining read ("Then I did this, then I did that"). I didn't even touch on quite how much baking I did or go over our family traditions for the season. However I guess I just really wanted to put the words down and the pictures up because it really was a great time and I want to remember it.

And it is work again in the morning tomorrow, so it's all over now! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too and have a great year.

P.S. I shall probably do a Christmas haul post in a couple of days. There seemed to be a theme and I want to take some interesting pictures of some of it. I did get one thing that was on my list way back for my birthday and is pictured above. Gandalf and his fireworks.