We broke up for Christmas on the Tuesday. It was a tough day at school, eating what was left of the party food and playing games until lunchtime when we got to go home.
Except I didn't go home, I went to my friend Evelyn's house instead.
And while she was gone Dad and I did Lego, and played Tony Hawks Pro-Skater on the playstation.
It was the first time i'd been home with a friend to play after school and I loved it. Evelyn had a lovely little doggie to play with and an older brother who produced art work to order (my dragon is now stck to the dishwasher).
When we arived to pick her up it seemed most of John Rankin school was hanging out there, cool. Even better was having a play on the drum kit...we took some shifting to go home!
Mum had gone out for another work do so we picked up a few bits and bobs from Waitrose for tea (including some last minute chocolate tree decorations) and headed home to watch a bit of worlds strongest man on telly before bed.
Mum had Wednesday morning off with us, we had a lovely lazy time.
We picked her up from work in the evening and had to go Christmas food shopping. We were remarkably good this year.
Even if Mum tired of the whole thing very quickly and wanted to get home.
She had all day off with us on Thursday. We went to see my old friend Ron in the morning but he was out which was a shame.
Once Dad was home we went to the cinema to watch Arthur Christmas.
After a brief confrontation with a woman who accused Dad of sitting in her seats (turns out her tickets were for the previous day) we settled in to watch the film with another huge portion of John Rankin kids who just so happened to be sitting in the row in front.
The film was brilliant and we really loved it.
After that we went out for tea, to Pizza Express. I really loved it, garlic dough balls, Pizza's and glass bottles of coke.
I didn't, wouldn't eat a dough ball and my bolognese wasn't spaghetti, just rubbish normal pasta.
We've added another job to the bedtime regime with the introduction of hot water bottles, here's my seasonal effort:
I started all this off when Den and Gail came to visit and bought me a lovely massive cat hot water bottle. He's proper snuggly.
Mum took us round to Auntie Christines on Friday morning, we had a job to finish off, decorating her christmas cake.
We did a lovely job of course. Dad met up with us when he had finished work for christmas but he hadn't won anything in the raffle to share with us (some sweets or biscuits would have been good).
Then it was Christmas eve, with the levels of excitement peaking nicely.
We had our annual group outing to the pub, there was a magnificent turnout this year.
Us kids had a great time, the weather was pretty good so we could play out in the garden as well in the pool and darts room, with it's lovely chalkboard:
Once we were home we had to track Santa on NORAD of course and make a few last minute preparations for the big day.
There was also the matter of leaving a little something for Santa and Rudolph and putting the santa please stop here sign outside. Neither of which went particularly well.
Yeah, first off the new santa cake stand we'd bought toppled over and broke and then Mum tried to bang the santa sign in using a brick...which obvioulsy didn't end too well.
Dad was not amused at all:
And then it was the big day!
We didn't even get up until nearly 8 o'clock.
Even though i'd woken up every hour on the hour most of the night. Or so I was claiming anyway.
First job was to get the stocking emptied and their contents opened:
If the stockings were anything to go by, the main event around the tree was going to be amazing.
Yeah, the stockings were great, so good in fact that I didn't even venture downstairs for a sneaky look for ages.
But eventually we did make our way downstairs:
Yes, there were plenty of things to open and get excited about:
Even Mum and Dad opening there boring old peoples stuff wasn't that much of a chore this year (maybe because Mum had so much Lindor....)
This year saw a lot of Christmas loose ends tidied up, firstly there was the game Pig Goes Pop which i'd been after for at least three years:
As well as the chocolate coin makers we'd been after for a good while.
Thats not to say all our other stuff wasn't totally brilliant of course as it was.
Yeah, all of it!
Then of course there was my massive tube of Jaffa Cakes:
Auntie Trish was coming round for a 'sleep over' so we were well excited when she turned up, she'd made a real effort and looked very well turned out.
Especially with the sackfull of goodies she'd bought with her too (not all of which were bottles of red wine either).
Soon after Alan and Hayley turned up too, we were all set for lunch:
Of course we'd eaten a fair amount of chocolates so we weren't that fussed about dinner to be honest.
No, we picked at a few little bits and pieces but that was about as far as it went.
Dad must have decided to have a day off from nagging us about what we hadn't eaten as well which was a result as it meant we could concentrate on pudding.
Since there was no Great Grandma the decision was made to not have a Christmas Pudding this year as no one else really likes it.
This years centrepiece was to be our chocolate yule log (expertly made with precision by Mum rather than thrown in a bowl and mixed up by Dad).
It was Ellis' and myself's job to decorate it of course with the truly magnificent cake decorations that Auntie Christine had managed to get for us after we couldn't find any, ANYWHERE!
Auntie Christine, Saviour of Christmas dinner...hooray!
Aside from a small squabble over 'artistic differences' we did a pretty good job I reckon.
Yeah, Ned banned the slightly grumpy looking snowman and a sign bearing the word 'Xmas':
Of course with the lack of Christmas pud we had nothing to set fire to at the table. Dad wasn't too happy about this and dug a left over sparkler out of the garage to shove in the chocolate log.
A great idea in principle...except that it sparked all over his lemon tart and stunk the house out with thick grey smoke.
Even with the aid of my brussel sprout lunch, the whoopee cushion took a right old battering, the first present casualty, lasting only until lunchtime:
Grandad and Anne arrived after dinner, it's always lovely to see them, especially at Christmas as Grandad makes a great target for screwed up balls of wrapping paper!
Quite by accident we ended up with a girls and a boys sofa. Our girls one looked nicer and smelled nicer than the boys one of course. We settled down and watched the Gruffalo's child for half an hour:
Then the telly was off and it was time for tea.
Didn't eat much of that either, ha ha.
Then it was time for a few games, first off it was a Yahtzee lesson with Auntie Trish:
And when Owen and Laura came round games reached a whole new level with Doggie Doo.
You load the dog's mouth with food, and then throw the dice to squeeze the handle, with each squeeze comes a very satisfying farting sound.
And after enough squeezes the food become a poo and drops out of the dogs bottom, first one with three poo's is the winner:
This saw us quite nicely up to bedtime.
We got to go off to our normal beds while Auntie Trish got to have the exclusive and seasonal 'pine scented' bedroom (the lounge on a sofa). I let her have my lovely Hello Kitty fleece blanket.
Boxing day, a time to digest what had gone on and spend some time with our new stuff.
As well as having a visit from Den and Gail too.
There was a lot of Lego built.
Quite bit of slouching about too.
We said goodbye to Trish who finally went over the edge and couldn't take any more, thanks for coming!
I cracked the whip for Dad to finish my Ninjago temple while the rest of us watched my diary of a wimpy kid DVD:
Dad and I had a quick trip down the park just before it got dark, I wanted to take my newly adorned bike out with my camera and cuddly toys in the basket:
Coconut loved going down the slide!
After two days solid in the house, Mum broke ranks and escaped to work on Tuesday.
We had a lazy morning and then ventured out to meet her at lunchtime for some proper decent food at last...McDonalds.
Once lunch was done and dusted we headed to the skatepark at Greenham to try out my new board and super cool new helmet:
I also took my tennis racket and cool coloured tennis balls to have a whack about with, I loved it:
I'm not so sure Dad did though as he had to keep running accross the field to retrieve the balls i'd hit.
I took my scooter for the skatepark and my football for the field. Dad did a good job a retrieving that too.
Auntie Christine came round with Laura and Darcey later on, that was lovely of course.
It was, it also made sure the next few years of entertainment have been covered with Mario and Sonic at the 2012 Olympics for the Wii:
On Wednesday we had another park outing with my fully loaded basket.
And another tennis wacking session, it's made my arm hurt actually.
And we also tried out our chocolate coin makers:
The results were surprisingly professional actually, but the best bit was licking the containers clean of course:
On Thursday it was a second trip to the cinema. This time for Alvin and the Chipmunks 3 - Chipwrecked!
We loved it of course and this time we didn't have to argue with anyone about our seats.
In the afternoon we had to watch the Darts on the telly because there were a few reprobates we know that went.
We watched for ages but only caught occasional glimpses of them.
I gave Dad a special treat by agreeing to go shopping with him in the evening. It was great actually, we looked at cool stuff and I made sure we got loads of proper food like Pepperami and square crisps.
Friday the call was made, it was ice skating time. I was really pleased about this, i'd been going on about it for ages as I remembered we went last year.
I did not want to . No. Not at all. Not for me. I took this photo on my super smart new camera before we went in, while we all still had full use of our limbs and didn't need any crutches:
Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't have been so hasty to go. Dad fell on me during one fall which I managed to shrug off but the second fall involving Andy had me in tears and carried of the ice by the attendant.
While Ellis was having a mare, I was loving it. I was doing laps and laps on my own, not even holding onto the sides either.
After a quick time out, I was back on it, this time flanked by two minders:
Things went well, but would have gone better if maybe i'd been more interested in actually skating rather than performing ballet moves as we shuffled around.
Andy had decided to take on camera duties instead:
So thats skating taken care of for another year and hopefully Andy is mobile again.
That takes us up to New Years Eve then.
Yup, another low key day, just another trip to the park where we enjoyed a few early fireworks in the fading daylight.
And of course another tennis wackathon.
In the evening we went to Abi and Fayes house, along with Kimi and Marney as well as all the associated grown ups.
The little ones are all quite mad, I did my best to avoid them, ha ha.
One by one we all crashed out in various parts of the house.
Until only I was awake, it had turned 2012 and we were celebrating by playing Rat-A-Tat cat (a card game). We had two games, I won them both, schooling all the grown ups. I don't think i'll be allowed to play again....
After a monster lie in on new years day we had a burst of energetic fun with Mum's Just Dance 3 game on the Wii.
Apart from a few near misses it was great fun, even if we did find it a bit tiring.
Mum was back to work on Monday so we took her out for lunch again, this time to the pub.
It couldn't come soon enough for me either, due to an administration error, i'd had no breakfast!!!
We had a play on victoria park afterwards, we really love it down there, even when it is cold and muddy!
That brings us up to a our traditional monday cut off point for updates I think? Things seem to go a bit haywire over Christmas and we don't have any idea what day it really is.
Anyway, we'd like to say a really massive thank you to everyone we've seen over the Christmas period, for the company, the presents, the food and the drink and wish you all a happy new year!
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