Our Christmas.

Both kids were awake at 3-ish [for a toilet break] and the Cherub woke again at 5-ish [for a stealthy rummage in the Santa Sack break, which was overheard by sharp-eared mother and resulted in confiscation] and then we all came to at about 7-ish and the boys brought their booty into our bedroom.  I think the out-of-focusness of this shot exactly reflects how tired I felt at this stage.  Actually it has to be said that all that waking caught up with Cherub too, and he had a few mini-melts before lunch.  (See the kitty sitting on Fixit behind him?)



Later in the morning, after the peppermint creams (and the Climber) were coated in chocolate...



...and the adults had showered and dressed, we opened the family presents under our tree.

Scrabble was a dominant theme in my present swag.



Whereas the boys had some Star Wars stuff...



and some Doctor Who stuff.



Exterminate!



Then it was time to drive over to the Fixit Family Lunch, where we ate a filling lunch, caught up with loved ones, opened more presents and admired Grandma Fixit's excellent collection of Santa doodads.





After that, we hit the road again to another family gathering at my Aunt and Uncle's house.  This was just when the enormous Christmas Day storms were starting to hit Melbourne.  We saw a fair bit of hail (just normal sized stones, not the golf balls that some suburbs saw) and a LOT of rain.  Big rain too, big raindrops.

Anyway, we had a very pleasant time; more family, food, more presents. Climber is now the proud owner of a digital camera with a very cute panorama setting. See?



And at about 7-ish we arrived home.  We had one very hairy drive through a road flood which was -we think- about 75cms high.  Fixit and Cherub thought it was cool, Climber and I felt quite uneasy and sighed with relief when we made it through.  And then as we approached our street we saw that the whole road was underwater at the southern end, and we had to drive around to the northern end to get into our own driveway. It started to clear not long after but in the meantime we raced down to the end of the road to capture the flood.



Nobody had any trouble falling asleep that evening, after all that fun, family and feasting! Hope you had a lovely day too.