Christmas Day.

We slept in on Christmas day. The kids knew we were going to, and they were okay with it. Actually, I was up before Briony, and when she got up I got her to help me fix my share of Christmas Dinner. She mixed up all the ingredients for the watergate salad and mixed the liquid parts of the green bean casserole. I explained the other steps, whipping the cream and adding it later so it wouldn't go flat, and mixing the beans with the sauce right before putting it in the oven. We also made the cornbread. Nid was in charge of the turkey, potatoes, parsnips... and everything else. After all the kitchen stuff got finished and cleaned up, I met the family in the living room to open presents. It took a while to sort everything out into piles, but it made it much more organized, and that was well worth it.

This year there was a lot of candy given and received. Because of the upcoming move, it didn't make a lot of sense to have a lot of stuff sent over from America that would either need to be left or shipped back. So my mom and my aunt and grandma all shipped edible presents. The children loved it! We told them it was their candy and they could all that they wanted, however we did expect them to eat three meals a day, and to eat all of their Christmas dinner (even if they had 5 candy bars right before it). They actually surprised me and only ate a bit at a time. I was really impressed. I'm going to make mine last till summer! After the presents were opened, the children went upstairs to play, and Nid and I started putting together the rest of the dinner.

Around mid-day I started to feel ill. At first I thought it was because I'd only had some toast for breakfast, and then a bit of chocolate, but I snacked on the corner of the cornbread for a while and it didn't help. Then I blamed our friends Matt and Jacqui (so sorry guys, it didn't end up being you at all!) because when they came over they'd both just recovered from being quite ill. By the time dinner was served, I could barely look at my plate brimming over without feeling even more ill. So as the family started eating, I nursed a Eno (like alka-seltzer) until everyone was nearly finished. We forgot to open our Crackers at the beginning of the meal, so we opened them. The package had 12, so we kept opening them until we ran out. I'd never participated in this tradition, and rather enjoyed it. I've heard it's near impossible to get them in the US (and when you do they are expensive) so it may be our only year with them, so I am glad that we did it. Reminder when you look at the photos, I was feeling rather ill at the time. I finally felt well enough to start eating, but it was slow going, and by the time I'd finished, Nid had put away the left overs, and the kids had already done all the washing up.

After a rest, we watched our daily movie, but were still too full to eat dessert. I called my mom and we had a nice long chat. I was really tired at the end of the day, and honestly cannot remember what else happened. I think I went to bed early....

Click HERE for more photos.