Christmas 2008

Our Christmas this year was, as I think it should be, about family. We started the day at 6am with 2 little high-pitched voices in the next room squealing excitedly: Cool!! Shortly afterwards they appeared in our bedroom clutching the loot from their stockings (it took a few trips, but clearly, untying the stockings from the bed was too much effort) and showed us what they'd received. Cherub was ecstatic to find the requested Mighty Mac with hooks ...

...and Climber liked his Lego, and his Slinky...

... but the Rubik's Cube that Santa delivered - which promised all the fun of the original plus 6 exciting electronic games - turned out to have No Moving Parts at all. Which, when you think about it, is really all the fun of the original and of course what Climber had been after. Still Santa is a very busy person so I don't blame him for being taken in by that spiel on the packaging. We'll just have to take the boy shopping so that we can own a plain AND a fancy cube.

After breakfast we gathered under our Christmas tree and exchanged our gifts to each other. Surprising me, Fixit gave me a globe; something I've always wanted but never bought due to feeling they were an expensive luxury. And thanks to kind handout from Mister Rudd's government, Fixit now has his very own ipod, an engraved blue nano.

It took supreme restraint on my part not to get him the purple one, I can tell you.

We drove out to Fixit's parents' house for the morning where we caught up with almost all the Fixit family. Fixit's brother, partner and kids were there, as were his sister and her husband, over from Adelaide but without their children.

Grandma Fixit has a big array of Christmas doodads, including a jack-in-the-box Santa who said ho ho ho when he popped out and made Climber jump. We had a lovely morning and it was hard to drag ourselves away but onwards we went to my uncle and aunt's house in time for a splendiferous feast and more presents.



Climber was lucky enough to be the Kris-kringle recipient of my aunt Carmel, who never having kids of her own was always the spoiling aunt to me, my siblings and all my cousins. So Climber not only received the Dangerous Book for Boys (Carmel likes to buy books being a great reader herself) but she was totally sympathetic to my tip that he was still young enough to need a toy alongside of a book - however good the book was - and thus also delighted him with a Transformer. Kris-kringle money limits are as nothing to Aunt Carmel.

We had a gorgeous day with the family, ate like royalty and left the childcare to my cousins. (Well, I was still suffering from the stupid parvovirus -still am, sad to say- so I think it was quite okay for me to sit around doing nothing more strenuous than lifting a wineglass to my lips.) We also spoke on the telephone to my Mum, my sister & her kids and my brother as well, who were enjoying their own celebration in Canberra.

We left just slightly later than the boys' bedtime, feeling like we'd had a great day. Cherub summed it up for us by telling us that Christmas is the best day ever, and noted wistfully that it is now a long time till the next one.