Hullo I must be going...

I can't stop long as I'm off to Shropshire to visit my mother, the children are unclad, unwashed and unfed, and the house looks like a bomb's hit it. Spouse is at work pulling the teeth out of all the people who got a sixpence stuck in their mouths courtesy of a Christmas pudding and I have just run down the road in my dressing gown to put the wheelie bin out in case the bin men miraculously do come today. If, as I suspect they don't, I shall be dashing over to the tip before Spouse is back... hence my lack of time.


The Christmas festivities passed in a pleasantly bucolic haze. Christmas starts for us with the children's nativity service at 5pm. (That makes five I've attended - count them, five - but it was charming and I do like the carols). Then it was home to rush round doing last minute tidying before toddling over to the neighbours who every year bravely hold a drinks party on Christmas Eve. There was some talk of cancellation this year as the host was in India up until recently, but their children all decided that everyone would still come anyway...

We staggered back from there at 11.30pm, and for once could sit down as we had wrapped all the presents. Actually not all. One of Santa's gifts was two dalek battle packs which I had forgotten about. Santa also had to write a note to the children (with his left hand so no 1 couldn't tell me it looked like my writing) and then of course I spilt red wine over all the presents. So I didn't get to bed till 3.30 and the kids woke up at ... 4am!

Luckily, they know better now then to wake us too, but I did stagger out of bed at 7.30 to put the turkey on. And we all went to see what Santa had left by the chimney. After weeks of angsting from Spouse and I and many trips to Argos (Nos 2&3 had requested the entire catalogue, and half the things they were after ended up being out of stock), No 1 seemed delighted with skates, no 2 was over the moon about her doll's house, no 3 was thrilled to bits with Polly Pocket, though it wasn't the right one, and bizarrely, no 4 was ecstatic about getting Scooby Doo, which seemed a bit of a crap present to me. But he does talk, so I suppose that makes up for it.

They all loved their daleks sets, but of course though we had wisely bought lots of batteries, they were the WRONG sort... So Spouse had to dash out and get some more.

Meanwhile I went back to bed (hurrah, my children are now old enough that I can), leaving the turkey to sizzle at the bottom of the oven.

However, when I got up I realised that it was cooking too slowly, but as it was on a trivet, it was too high to put anywhere else in the oven. With the help of my sil and watched by bil, mil and Spouse (who I ended up banishing from the kitchen because of the stress of it all), we removed turkey from trivet and put it on a plate. Stupidly, I then forgot to put something to catch the fat, so when we did get the bloody thing out finally gallons of the stuff poured onto the floor. Mind you, it did shine the floor up nicely...

In the meantime my Christmas pud which I had made the day before (great recipe for lazy mums...) was a disaster as I forgot to put the suet in, so it had no fat to bind it. It ended up a glutinous mess, in a vaguely puddingy shape, but it did burn nicely and it tasted edible. Luckily sil had provided another pudding.

Bil meanwhile had chopped enough vegetables to feed the whole of England. So yesterday I decided to make soup from the leftovers. I was halfway through blending the remains, when my blender literally caught fire (it was a wedding present seventeen years ago, so I suppose it's done pretty well really). I then got out my smoothie maker to finish off what was left, and managed to chop the end off the plastic thingie which I was using to push the vegetables down. So that lot got thrown away. I think someone is trying to tell me something...

Still, we had a lovely day, which ended with us watching Dr Who en famille. An hour of David Tennant is enough to make this particular mum's Christmas absolutely perfect....

Ahh, bliss!