Saturday, January 24, 2009

Christmas Day 2008

Thursday 25th December 2008
As a rule, our kids are well behaved on Christmas Day. In view of the fact that working in the Pub trade meant that we worked late on Christmas Eve, we had an agreement with the kids that they could open the sack at the end of their beds, but they weren’t to wake us up until 8am.
Invariably this would mean that they woke us up at about 7am by standing outside our bedroom door discussing how much longer it was until 8am and the signal to come into our room, this has always worked well in the past.
This year Fliss and Aimee were staying with us and they are a bad influence on the kids, the kids were awake at 6am as you would expect, Fliss and Aimee were making one hell of a row by 6.15am and were egging the kids on to come and get us out of bed.
Carolyn got out of bed at 7.30am, so did Ian, but in a gesture of defiance insisted on having a shower first, ensuring that he didn’t leave the bedroom until 8am.
When Ian got into the family room it was mayhem, Fliss and Aimee had wound the kids up so much it was deafening.
We started handing out presents straight away and before long you couldn’t see the floor for Ex-Rainforest, Fliss and Aimee bought the kids a slip and slide game which involves a big piece of blow up plastic and water, the idea being that you run up to it, dive on it and slide to the other end, first one to pick the blow up plastic flag up wins.
They bought Carolyn a pair of Aussie Flip Flops (Thongs) and a Cork Hat, Ian got a Big Mouth Billy Bass from them, it sings Don’t Worry Be Happy and Take Me To The River, it has a motion sensor on it which sets it off so Ian has put it in the kids toilet so that it can sense as many motions as it takes to run the battery out.
After presents and breakfast we drove to Meelup for a swim, we have never seen it so busy and by the time that we left a couple of hours later, people were parking up the road amongst the bushes.
We had to drive to Meelup in two cars because, Marisa got a Surfboard and Kristian got a Kayak which they both wanted to try out and we don’t have roof bars yet.
Needless to say, Marisa was standing on her surfboard quite confidently within a couple of minutes, admittedly there wasn’t much in the way of waves, but what there was Marisa managed to glide effortlessly in on, don’t you hate kids that are good at everything.
Kristian took to his Kayak like a duck to water, we were a little bit unsure as to whether he would get on with it, he can be a bit of a wimp sometimes and this thing is quite big, but he loved it.
The boys wouldn’t try the surfboard but Marisa and Fraser both tried out the Kayak and they coped really well with it, at least it looks like a present that is going to get well used.
Before we went to the beach Ian had put the Turkey onto the Spit Roast and switched it on so that it would be ready when we got back, by the time we got home it was done to perfection, it was just a case of Carve it, get out the Salads and Christmas Crackers (Bonbons) and tuck in.
We had set up the tables and chairs out on the lawn and ate Christmas Dinner under a beating sun for the first time, that is to say everyone apart from Ian ate their dinner under a beating sun, Ian ate his under the Garden Umbrella that was shading his chair.
In the afternoon we did what appears to be a worldwide ritual, we put on a film for the kids (Narnia, Prince Caspian) which was a present for them from Elena at work, all the adults then did the done thing and went to sleep.
We had originally had every intention of going down to our local beach for a swim or a walk after our afternoon nap, but best laid plans and all that, we never quite got round to it and had a dossy evening instead, finished off with a family viewing of Bourne Identity.
Fliss was as tired as a newt having got up at 6am and drinking since 10am so slept through most of it, Aimee being similarly tired managed to only nod off a few times.
We had an early night.

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