My 50th Post!!!

Can you believe that this is my 50th post? To celebrate I have brought you some flowers. Some Hollyhocks from my Mother's garden. We spent Christmas Eve at my Mum and Dad's house together with my sister's family and my brother's family. This is a tradition we keep to each year. We eat a meal together in the evening and then we share and open presents. When we go home we each have one present to take with us. Each year we draw names out of a hat, and those people are who we buy for next year. I really love this tradition because it means we don't have to take so much stuff home!

My Dad cooks chickens in the webber and roasts potatoes in the oven. My Mum makes salads and a Christmas pudding and we all bring something that our family would like to eat. Mum also provides ice-cream and jelly for the younger members of the family who don't like pudding. Some rather rude youngsters refer to the fruit in the pudding as "dead flies". ("No thank you Grandma. I don't eat dead flies. They're not good for you.") Badly brought up hooligans! Their mother ought to be ashamed!!! (And I would be, but Miss 21 first uttered this phrase at 2 tears of age and it's been a long time and this phrase is now part of our family history and we're quite fond of it now.)

These were my revellers at the party. Today we enjoyed Christmas day at home together. Both sets of my children's grandparents came for lunch. We started the day by waking our children up at 8:30am, because we didn't want to wait any longer. Our kids have never woken early for Christmas and it's generally such a quiet day that they tend to sleep in. We sung a Christmas carol and had family prayer and then opened our presents. We generally give them one gift each with possibly one or two share or family gifts thrown in. I think everyone was happy with their gift and then we all started preparing lunch together. We listened to Christmas music and had a wonderful time together. Even my married daughter and her husband were able to pop in on their way to the other side of the family's house. They needed salt to make playdough to complete a gift and like Mother Hubbard their cupboard was bare. They are both students and sometimes they come to our house to fill their cupboards. We had 12 people for lunch and whilst everyone helped, Miss 15 and Miss 17 worked really hard to help me. I just felt so blessed to have them here to help me. I don't know why, but my kids are the coolest! We have had a very laid back evening with no dinner preparation, just lots of nibbling on leftovers. ( This is all good because there was a lot leftover this year.) Of course there has been quite a bit of gingerbread house nibbling too. Misses 17 and 10 and Mr 7 made and decorated the largest gingerbread house I have ever seen sometime last week. I also made two Christmas puddings (Yes, there were some dead flies in it. Not many though. I use fruit medley, dates, and instead of sultanas I put in dried apricots.) and custard so that has been keeping us going too! I hope that you have had a wonderful Christmas day at your house too. And if you don't celebrate Christmas I hope you have had a wonderful rest day! Tomorrow we get a phonecall from our Miss 21 who is serving a mission on the other side of the world. It's just a half hour phonecall, but we are looking forward to hearing her voice. I hope you have a wonderful day tomorrow too!!!