just another morning here

Boxing day started in a very lazy fashion; Steve and I watched a film in bed. The children decided, for once in their lives, to get up and ready on time and in a shock event, they were ready before us! We went over to Steve’s parents’ house for the day which was lovely – we exchanged gifts before a fabulous buffet lunch.

After lunch we played games and fell asleep in front of Elf … then picked at the food again before watching the Borrowers in the evening. Lovely and relaxed

Today we had always planned to go sales shopping – something we NEVER normally do, but I confess now, I had planned to buy presents for my family (who we are seeing tomorrow) after Christmas. Well – you get more for your money! We’d already bought a few, but found the last few successfully today. We should have our Christmas celebrations later on every year!

The children spent a bit of their Christmas money too, so they were very happy – Josiah bought the last Harry Potter film on DVD so we came home and watched that, closely followed by Senna (one of Steve’s presents). Looking forward to going over to friends’ tonight … and Steve’s off for the whole week between Christmas and New Year, so it does feel as though the holiday is stretching out nicely

Josiah went to stay at the school boarding house for the past couple of days – his Christmas treat! We spotted him at services yesterday but he hardly even looks at us really, we have to try and thump him as he processes by. He did deign to talk to us a bit when we went across to the boarding house for a buffet after the big Christmas Eve service yesterday but I think that was only because we had a present for him! It’s a bit strange on Christmas Day without him in the morning but he’s very happy being ‘in the zone’ as a chorister, and it means we don’t have to rush out of bed … we’re not committed enough to make it to the Cathedral for the first service of the day!
We opened stockings with the girls this morning, then got ready and arrived at the Cathedral in time for Mattins – met Steve’s parents there too. After the service we bundled across to the school with around 20 other chorister families for drinks and then Christmas dinner, which was fantastic.

Last time we did this it was Josiah’s first year and we felt a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing but this year we really enjoyed it. Well, the girls moaned about having to go back to evensong after lunch but they had to lump it!

Once home Josiah opened a couple of presents, the cat opened hers (!!), and we all loafed around enjoying presents, eating rubbish food, then eventually watching Dr Who.

We tried to get a family photo too, almost got a decent one but decided that the silly one was probably the best!

Anyway. The nice thing about having spent the day in the Cathedral is that we still have two family get-togethers to go, so we still have lots of festivities ahead of us

We came to the conclusion that when one’s birthday is so close to Christmas that there’s hardly any time to do any treat-type thing at the time, it doesn’t really matter if you have your birthday present a bit early. Abbie’s just done 3 days on a riding/stable management course (ie riding and about the same amount of mucking out!) as her birthday present this year. She’s had a wonderful time

Today was Josiah’s 10th birthday party; a little in advance of his actual birthday but practically the only time near to his birthday that we could fit in a party!

He really wanted to go out to the woods, build a den, and sleep in it – but this was a little outside of Steve and my comfort zone! Instead we found this National Trust Wild Tribe event going on which was about as close as we could get, so we booked places for two carfuls of boys!

They had a wonderful time in the woods, once they stopped being over-excited and actually managed to get on with building a den. Their shelter turned out rather well, complete with bracken waterproofing on roof and walls. They managed to get all seven of them plus an extra friend that they made on the day into the den for lunch

After our picnic we went down to the main campfire where a couple of the boys did some firelighting, and the group cooked sausages and then roasted marshmallows. Our gang of boys climbed down to the stream to build dams and bridges … then they came back up to the dens and just played in the woods.

I’m sure they could have played for much longer if we’d let them – but the National Trust rangers were probably tired of us by then! Plus it had started to rain a tiny bit. This is the National Trust blog with a post about last month’s Wild Tribe event … perhaps this one will get written up by them at some point (I dread to think what they’ll write about our gang of exuberant boys!)

Anyway, after that fantastic day, we headed back towards home to Pizza Hut for tea, meeting the girls there so that they could join us for something to eat. The boys were very excitable all the way through the meal which made it marginally stressful but the waiter was very good with them and didn’t seem to mind too much.

We had a little bit of time at home for Joe to open presents/cards, then we stuck Home Alone on the big screen for a chill out before parents arrived to collect the boys. They all said they had a lovely day, and Josiah certainly enjoyed himself, and that’s what counts