Twas the night before Christmas...

We had an Italian Christmas Eve at our house year with Mike's eggplant parmesan and my baked ziti. I say that like we have made these dishes before!! 

Of course, we had to have Christmas crackers!



And I made everyone wear them!

The kids had their first alcoholic beverages.

Not really!

I always miss my family at Christmastime more than I let on. Of course I miss mince pies and Christmas cake and triffle and Christmas pudding and turkey and stuffing and all of that too! (In fact, I don't particularly like mince pies and Christmas pudding but I love the familiarity!)  But most of all I miss my people. I miss the Christmas Spectacular, and Nana and Gramps on the couch and Mum busying about in the kitchen and Dad with 'his corner' of carefully placed gifts and my sisters all glammed up and gorgeous and Boxing Day with the Parry's cousins. Skype wasn't working today, hopefully it will tomorrow...

But now we are making new memories, creating what my own kids will think of when they think of Christmas. Some traditions are different but many will remain in the same, Christmas crackers being one of them!

One new tradition we are starting is the sprinkling of 'reindeer food' across the lawn before bedtime to guide the reindeer and Santa down to our house. Reindeer food consists of oats, the reindeer love it, and glitter so they can see it glistening in the moonlight and know where to land, I suspect it helps them to fly too!

A job well done. Go ahead and enlarge the picture to see Violet enjoying a sampling of reindeer food. I fear a glittery diaper tomorrow!

 

While Father Christmas is fond of a mince pie and a glass of sherry, I hear Santa is a fan of cookies and milk. I guess old St. Nick or whatever his name is likes a bit of variety! We thought he must get fed up of so many cookies, the United States is a big place after all, and we went for a sunken chocolate muffin instead. I say 'sunken' since someone, perhaps a golblin, turned off the oven!

Nothing cuter than kids in new Christmas jammies!

Before bedtime we read our new book, 'The Spirit of Christmas' and Violet fell asleep with her head against me and Caden was asleep within five seconds of his head hitting the pillow!

It seems Santa has indeed 'been', as when I went down for a glass of water I came across this scene! I think we might have two very excited kids on our hands in the morning!!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

P.S. Could I say Christmas anymore in this post? Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!!