Chickywiggle's Blogspot: Blog A Day - 25th September 2013

Day 25- 3 months till Christmas

In case you can't guess it's a pretty big event in our house....... do you celebrate? how? have you any childhood traditions you are continuing with your children?

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If you have been following my blog you will know I am rather a Christmas addict. But Christmas for me has changed soo much since I was little.

It's no longer me that is allowed to put the star up, my boys take it in turns to be lifted up and put it on.

Living 200+ miles away from both sets of parents Christmas is a time for US. I do miss the hustle and bustle from when I was little. I remember the Christmas Day - regimented but relaxed..... every year the same.

Christmas 15+ years ago.

Wake up
Open our Stocking presents from Santa... you know even when we were old enough to know he didn't really bring them... we still got one each :)
Have breakfast.
Get dressed in a pretty dress - my favourite was a red velvet one I had when I was really little, my sisters was identical and they were lovely.
Bundle all the pressies up from under the tree into the car and head over to my Nanna and Grandad's house where the rest of the family would also go...... until just before I left for uni when there were in total 7 of us between the ages of 5 and 18 as well as 8 adults.... it was getting as bit packed and a bit much for Nanna to cope with lunch/ tea.
Once everyone had arrived, put the presents under the tree again and we had settled down we would open our presents from everyone else. Me and my sister were chief pressie giver outters as we were the oldest.... and there was always the 'mystery present' that the label had fallen off of and had to wait until last for the giver to work out whose it was.
It would by then be time for dinner. ..... always cold and aways with an element forgotten (either not cooked or not taken out the microwave/ fridge)
After that it was time for the adults to sleep while the kids ran amok playing with their new pressies. I remember as a teenager one year I got really nice pressies but nothing 'playable' - I was quite disappointed as I sat with a wordsearch book!!
Much later on we played a game, generally a picture one my nanna had created where you had to name the cartoon character, famous person, z-list celebrity or a word game e.g. "WWYAMX is the title of which christmas song?" (We Wish You A Merry Xmas).
Then it would be tea time - lots of leftovers and MORE!! No one could ever eat much as we were all still stuffed from dinner.
settling down again it was time for MORE presents ...... tree presents. The only real rule was that it has to be small enough and light enough to hang from a tree branch (always a real tree). As you can imagine it was mainly tat (tho some years people did do amazingly well). Towards the end (with so many people) we changed the rules to set a £2 limit each and see who could buy the worse present.
Home time would always be really late (about 11pm).

Christmas 2013 .........

My Christmas day, well i am trying to persuade hubby to bring a bit of this tradition into our home.... we've only had 2 so far as the 4 of us and as the kids were so little it was hard to bring any order.....

I loved it tho, I loved the pressie opening, I loved their faces, I loved the squeals and running about........ and music - I LOVE Christmas Music!!!!!! (in fact I am listening to it as I type this).

We have other traditions in the house tho that I never had as a child.

Naughty 'Bouncy' Ben Elf

For Starters Naughty 'Bouncy' Ben Elf comes to stay (this year he is bringing his cousin along to teach him how to behave). This is my variation of Elf on the Shelf.

He arrives on the 1st of December with his passport, a notebook, some goodies for the children and a note from Santa saying to keep and eye on him and report back if he is bad.

He gets up to sooo much mischief - from eating the kids cereal in the mornings to wrapping all their books up to climbing up the Christmas tree and making himself orange milk! It's going to be so hard to think up another 24 ideas this year. I know I wrote a list last year but I can't find it - you can find out what he got up to tho on his facebook page.

This year he has also got a twitter page and a tab on my blog.

On Christmas Eve he packs his bag and waits under the tree with the stockings ready to home with Santa when the presents are left.

Advent treats.

Cheap they may be but how boring are chocolate advent calenders. This is why we have our own treat advent calender. Last year it was a fabric one but this year I have a lovely wooden one to decorate and hopefully keep as our yearly traditional one. I'll be sure to keep you posted on my progress.

I'm going to fill this with a treat for each child each day (either a lego mini fig, lego animal, chocolate or perhaps a challenge to do to get a slightly bigger treat).

Christmas games

I got a lovely Christmas game last year called Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer DVD game from Home Bargains (this one) and Ben loved it. we made sure to play it most nights.

Christmas Music, books and Films

Of course for the entire month of December this house is filled with Christmas music, traditional films and story books (mummy and the kids).

I'll post more on these as we get nearer December... for now please share your favourites, or if you have any to review they would be welcome in this house.

Christmas PJ's

Our final tradition.......... Christmas PJ's - mummy and the boys MUST have a pair of Christmas PJ's every year.

New traditions: