The Magic of Christmas // Our Christmas 2015

Christmas as a child is such a magical, wonderful time. I remember the feeling so clearly, waking up and spotting my sack full of presents at the end of my bed – it was all SO exciting.

Now I get to witness that magic again through the eyes of my daughter, and Christmas is really exciting once again. This Christmas she is almost four (straight after new year!) and so she has been so much more interested in it all, and really couldn’t wait for it to be here. She has been asking for weeks if it is Christmas yet, and telling anyone who asks that she would like a doggy for Christmas, but “not a real one, because that would scare Molly and Daisy (our cats)”.

Once the actual day arrived, she woke up and completely forgot it was Christmas, until I reminded her and suggested she go and look at the end of her bed to see if Santa had been. She was so happy once she saw the sack full of presents and asked if she could open one straight away. I said yes and that one turned into three. The first one she picked out to open was her much longed-for doggy (which is weird because I’m sure Santa put it much further down in the sack – the magic of Christmas…??), so she was a very happy bunny.

We then dragged our sleepy selves out of bed and had our traditional Christmas day morning breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs on muffins, and Ava had the crumpets she had requested.

After that it was a blur of seeing lots of family at two different houses, a rush of opening presents and giving Christmas hugs, and Ava ploughing through her sack until it was completely empty. Other years she has been really tired on Christmas day, and has lost interest in unwrapping presents rather quickly, but this year she just wanted more, more, more. It was lovely to see her so excited.

Watching your child get so excited about the gifts you have so lovingly chosen is really lovely. Of course it’s not just, or even mainly, about the presents, and I have had to remind her a few times that all the other stuff is really important too, but I’m not sure she believes me. She has been much more interested in Santa and the reindeer this year though, and got very excited about helping me decorate the tree and her cute mini tree. The build up to Christmas was really lovely with her this year, and I think it will just get better every year (until she stops believing in Santa I guess!).

We had an amazing Christmas dinner at the mother-in-law’s and then lots more present giving and unwrapping. The kids got spoilt of course, and had loads of fun playing with their new toys, and then suddenly it was already evening. Every year Christmas Day seems go by faster and faster, and this year seemed especially quick.

It’s lovely spending time at our families houses of course, but one year I would really love for us to stay at home all day, and have people come and visit us if they would like to. It’s just always such a rush getting up in the morning, and then going from house to house with all of our presents and things, and I think it would be lovely to be able to get up when we want to and not have to rush anywhere, opening presents as we feel like it. Maybe next year.

The couple of days after Christmas were spent being lazy at home as A has been quite poorly, and to be honest that was just what I needed (not the poorliness!). I have been burning the metaphorical candle at both ends recently and wasn’t spending any time at all relaxing as I just kept thinking about all the things I could and should be doing when I did try to relax. So a couple of lazy days just came at the right time so I could sit and snuggle my girl and not feel guilty for once.

We then had a big family Christmas day on Monday which was great, as we don’t get to see them all very often. It was a lovely day, with lots of wine, food, more presents, kids, and family time. Now we’ve got a good few days having some family time, getting lots of fresh air, and sorting the house out, and I can’t wait. Then on Saturday it’s Ava’s fourth birthday! I’m not even sure what we are doing for that yet though, but I don’t think it will be huge.

Our Christmas has been a reasonably relaxed one, with a good amount of family time – which is just what we all needed this year I think. It’s still all been tiring though, so I’m quite glad it’s over now!

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas!