Christmas Piccies

Had a lovely Christmas. Well, if truth be told a slightly over emotional one in places, especially at bedtime, but lovely everywhere else.

Emily heard sleigh bells again at bedtime on Christmas Eve, just like last year. Must have been the reindeer flying overhead on their way to Scotland. Unlike last year, however, Emily didn't wake up on Christmas morning until 5.30, lol, which was a distinct improvement on last year's 3.15. She opened her stocking in bed with us at 6am amid squeals of delight and alarmed looks from Romeo and Juliet who clearly hadn't worked out what was going on. Forever to be remembered as the "hair bow stocking" as Santa had gone a bit overboard with the hair accessories this year, lol. Must have been looking at those job lots on ebay that did it. There were lots of other lovely bits and bobs in her stocking too though, including a baby Hedwig and a cuddly Hippogriff!

After the Great Stocking Opening we went downstairs to get some breakfast and for Emily to pull Daddy's and my homemade presents from her out from under the dining room Christmas tree. Here she is waiting for us to open our loot:
and here are our lovely home made presents, including a serviette decoupage-d candle holder, bookmark, necklace, love tokens, fimo models of us both, all sorts of other things and beautiful cards with snowflakes on a chain for Daddy's first one and a bag of glitter on his second, a paper doll version of me on my first one and reindeer in the snow on my second one. In the run up to Christmas Emily spent *hours* down there doing secret craft stuff and it was sooooo touching to see how much effort she'd gone to. Our Star Girl.

Back upstairs to our little Christmas tree and Emily's main presents from us. She had a ball and loved everything, especially the guitar she'd been wanting for months and months. She was impressed with the personalised Harry Potter Christmas card too, lol.


Later on in the morning Emily showed off all her new pressies to Nana, Gramps and Grandad and had a long chat on the phone with Uncle David and Aunty Barbara. Christmas Dinner was superb and enjoyed by everyone. We had loads of crackers and Emily had made little angels to go on every plate. We normally keep back one present to give Emily after she's finished her dinner while everyone else is still eating - this year it was the Fashion Folder we made for her with the blank fashion croquis in it; I also found blank handbag and shoe templates and blank faces for her to design make up onto. That seemed to go down well :-)
After Christmas dinner, we had two competitions, entirely designed and thought up by Emily in the days before Christmas - a dance competition and a drawing competition. She'd thought it through and organised it really well, I was very impressed! Everyone had fun doing those. Daddy won the drawing competition which probably wasn't surprising, but Emily awarded me the prize for the dancing competition, rofl, so I think she may have been a teeny bit biased!

Then it was time to delve under the big Christmas tree for the grown ups' pressies to each other and for Emily's presents from Nana/Gramps/Grandad/Uncle D & Aunty B. Emily ably dished everything out and she was thrilled to bits with her little hoard which included lovely clothes, a home planetarium and some beautiful ornaments for her collections from Nana and Gramps, a beautiful lilac jumper from D&B and a big gothic dark knights/castle/battle set from Grandad. She'd "adopted" this set on numerous visits to Tesco because she thought some of the bits in it would do as Harry Potter characters/creatures - thestrals, voldermort etc. Who knows if she'll have some of the real characters to add to the play set come her birthday? ;-)

The rest of the day and the following two days have been spent playing with Emily's new bits and bobs. On Boxing Day she managed to spend FOUR HOURS lying on the floor downstairs engrossed in Ello whilst watching the first few episodes of W.i.t.c.h and the Narnia film on DVD. Four hours!!! Why doesn't this girl have a concentration span that long when it comes to maths??

This afternoon I took Gramps and Nana to Lincoln for Gramps' hospital appointment to look inside his bladder, which seems to have gone very smoothly. Can't believe how fast they were in and out; I wish Scunthorpe General would take some lessons from Lincoln. Merlin is still doing great as far as recovery from his surgery goes. It may be wishful thinking but we all think he's even put on a little bit of weight since then. Back to the vets for him on Friday to have his stitches out, then he'll finally be allowed to eat normally and go back out to play in his kingdom! Meanwhile, I'm finalising a plan in my head to make Emily's birthday really special for her. Five days now and counting!