That was it! Xmas eve is over! I got a pair of sweatpants, five pairs of mum's knitted socks (BEST PRESENT!), the very last book of "Egoland" day-strips (completing my collection) and a we've ordered it but it hasn't arrived yet-notice on a book (Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic (Пикник на обочине) (1971) apparently it cannot be found in Danish, but my parents ordered an English translation for me ) It's all over! -now I need to relax
Here in England it's 1am and I'm wondering if the presents will survive the night under the tree, or if one of our cats will go through a spontanious destructive phase. Paper is their favourite thing to play with right now, and that wrapping does look lovely... Nah, they're good cats and they'd never do anything like that. They only destroy things when they've got an audience.
+1 I've had a wonderful Christmas morning. I've got Star Trek books to last me the next few years (including some really obscure ones), Firefly and Serenity on DVD, a model of the lovely new Enterprise (as seen on Kira's Mom's Treksmas tree!) and loads more bits and bobs. I'm overloaded on tea and Quality Street sweets. I hope I'll have room for Christmas dinner! Merry Christmas, everyone.
I think my family overdid the gifts this year...I got some really nice surprises. And Mom said there's one more present coming for me.
We do Christmas lunch rather than dinner precisely to avoid the Quality Street paradox. The paradox being that even when full, there's always room for another Quality Street.
My weakness is See's Candies. Especially those rectangular lollipops we used to get in our stockings as kids. This year, since we're having two or three Christmases, I've tried to avoid the candy---well, more or less. Just sitting here waiting for the inlaws to arrive. Hubby is being nice and actually cleaned up after himself, so the kitchen is still tidy. Now we just wait.
You really do make it sound like you're waiting for the executioner's axe to fall. I hope it ends up being more fun that you expect/fear!
I'm glad I'm not the only one with a geeky nativity scene. In my family, it has been a tradition to bake the nativity scene out of gingerbread. Well, actually, there's no ginger involved. It's called Lebkuchen here, I have no idea if there's an English/American equivalent. It looks like this: As you might be able to see, I added a geeky touch to it about two years ago or so, the Tenth Doctor. After all, he's a time traveller and he once said he got the last room at the inn. Here's a close-up (sorry, not quite sharp):
^ I SO love that! I had a fun day watching DVDs and playing games with the kids, and listening to my daughter play her new tenor recorder. It sounds beautiful (she's a grade 4 oboe player so she's pretty good) and well worth the £50 (down from £62!). My older son liked his Lego and but my younger son was out of sorts, which is normal for his thanks to his autism. Christmas day always seems to be disappointing for him simply because the build-up is almost too much for him to handle. From the in-laws there was the usual haul of cheap chocolates and biscuits, which was no surprise. My favourite gift was from my older son, who got me a small Harry Potter Lego set with Dobby the House Elf in it. So, yay, I finally have a House Elf! Shame he can't clean the house for me, though.
Thanks for the kind words. It's on display until January 6th and it's supposed to get eaten eventually but often it's not, at least not all of it. For one thing, we also have small, normal Lebkuchen and together with the figures it's a lot to eat for the three of us but it also takes some effort to destroy something like that and eat baby Jesus, for example.
This is the reason I've never even made a gingerbread house - I'd find it difficult to dismantle that and eat it. There's no way I'd be able to eat a baby!
Well, I ate my favourite Doctor twice last year (somehow we made more than we needed) so I'm beyond having qualms about eating baby Jesus this year.
Had an exhausting Christmas Day at my sister's house- there were 14 of us eating, talking, laughing, and fussing over the baby. My nephew mostly stayed in his room- he's still recovering from surgery and really couldn't enjoy the holiday much. He managed to eat a bit and open presents, at least!
Oh, you have no idea..... Actually, the boys and I had a decent time. We played the Wii and watched Doctor Who together. I also scored big points with the younger one (15 yr old boy) by giving him a cd from my collection. It was a band he really liked, and I had already saved it to my computer, so I gave it to him. He looked at it like I had just handed him a holy relic *cue choir of angels*. Crazy-ass sister in law keep rambling on and on (about the evils of labor unions, the evils of teenage dating, the evils of the public school system---see the pattern? ), so I left them in the dinning room after dinner. I was a model of restraint, but my diplomacy dam can only hold back so much. Hubby was very good at letting me escape from crazy-ass SIL; he took care of all the cooking, cleaning, dishes--everything. But they stayed for about 8 or 9 hours--about all I could take. I finally got to drag out our old camera and get a few snaps of our little house before Hubby's family descended: My little tree Dinning room and a bad close-up my one nutcracker, a gift last year, from my best pal: