December catch up - Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve. That special special night. The magic just captures the child in my heart and makes me jump and wriggle and giggle with excitement.

This Chrstmas Eve was spent, as always, enveloped in the warmth of my family.

We spent the morning preparing our veg for our Christmas dinner, cooking for the evening and doing last minute chores like some cleaning and clearing the snow (yes snow!! woo hoo a white Christmas!) from our path.

K and I baked some gingerbread cookies for Santa. These also added into our collection of baked goodies to give as gifts and for us to enjoy.

The whole family had booked tickets to see Fraser in his Panto! Grannies , Grandads and Aunties! It was so much fun! I could only take one pic of the stage before it began as no photography is allowed during the show. Not even for family blog purposes. What's up with that?? lol

One of my favourite parts was when Beauty was kissed by Prince Charming and didn't wake up. Then her best friend Jester thought she was dead. So he leaned down and kissed her goodbye. Then sadly made his way through the audience. Beauty began to slowly stir and wake up with the kiss form her best friend, her true love!! Our little Princess was just on the edge of her seat!! She jumped up and, in her little anguished voice, shouted across the theatre!

" Jester!! Jester!! Jester! Sleeping beauty has waked up!!"

My heart was in my mouth for her and her little proud face when he turned back around and embraced his love just melted me into a puddle.

Well done Kirsten, you saved the day. Aha! (complete with panto land thigh slap!)

It has become a Christmas Eve tradition for everyone to come to our house for some form of dinner. This "dinner" has taken on many forms over the years, sometimes it depends on how much wine it took to help the meal cook! This year it had to be a re heatable, easy dish. So I made some traditional scottish stovies with Roast beef. We used plastic plates and so the clear up was simple. Perfect.

Another Christmas eve tradition is the gift of new pyjamas, given to all four of us , from me. I love this tradition and my kids are real jammie kids, so they are always really excited to open these gifts.

It was all just a little too exciting to look at all of the gifts under our tree!

Santa hadn't even been yet and there were gifts for everyone under there!

So just to take the edge off of my  their excitement a little, we let them open another gift each, the one from Murray and I.

They were more happy and excited by these gifts than I could have ever imagined!!

We gave K her very own, real actual working, mini sewing machine!

Fraser is our budding chef. I made an apron for him and wrapped it up with a cookbook, written by a teenager for teenagers. And a giftcard for tesco so he can by some ingredients.

They loved them. So we were very happy.

We prepared Santa's snack

2 Gingerbread cookies, beer from Fraser and hot cocoa from K. We hope it stayed warm for Santa in the flask. And of course a carrot for the reindeer to share.

All too soon it was time for our Christmas eve bedtime story

Which is , of course, the night before Christmas.

Once everyone went home to begin their own Christmas preparations, I prepped our Bird , ready to go into the oven in the morning. 

I pulled on my very own brand new Christmas PJs! And settled down to watch The Holiday .

 It was perfect.

Then we tucked ourselves in for a warm winter's nap, to allow the big man in red  to get on with some very important business.

Merry Christmas to all and to all, A good night.

x x x