Thursday 25 December 2008

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

To all my friends & family around the world! Hope you have had a lovely day so far! It is 2p.m. here & we have had 4 hours of Christmas bliss...yes, we only woke up at 10a.m! We enjoyed a Christmas Eve family dinner last night for the first time ever. Having a blog has opened my eyes to so many other traditions & happenings all around the world that I decided to have TWO Christmas dinners to go with our TWO Christmas trees this year! Last night was our official Thanksgiving Dinner, as we can't do that at the proper time here as it is not an African Celebration therefore not a public holiday. The end of November is a very busy time for us here with schools all having prize-givings, carol concerts, etc.

I put a few traditions in place for our Thanksgiving dinner & it was great. We all made a toast then took it in turns to read out our "Gratitude" Lists & our "Highlights of the Year" lists, of which we needed to have at least 5, those were the rules I set & everyone typed their lists & their toast out for me to keep in a Christmas Box. As the years go by I know we will love to be reminded of how we have grown & changed, when we read out our previous year's lists! We also wrote a "Secret Santa" message to every member of the family, just a one liner starting with "I LOVE..."& popped them into the recipient's glass. I gave everyone instructions as to what font to use, in what size, so that it really would be secret! We each read out our 5 comments, which was very sweet & touching & definitely a tradition for keeps.

We enjoyed delicious gammon ham, all pre-cooked from "My Chef" & supplemented with chips & fresh veg, followed by vanilla icecream igloos embedded with Chuckles! Mmmm...Then we watched a DVD of "The Holiday", a cheesy Christmas movie that I LOVE;-) with popcorn & cokes, so it was a real treat of a night for us all! Shane & I had to stay up a little later than the kids to do our Santa chores & pack all the gifts into their stockings, hanging from the dresser in the hall. A tip for you for next year:-carry the presents through in pillows cases - the plastic packets were very 'crackly'!

Amazingly all 4 kids slept in, exhausted from the excitement the night before - another reason why a Christmas Eve Thanksgiving dinner tradition is definitely a keeper! We drew out present opening as long as possible & have only just finished...now I have a line of people behind me waiting to use this pc to download songs onto ipods, etc! Catch you later;-)

3 comments:

Vicki said...

Merry Christmas to you and your family. We are now into Boxing Day sales and have braved the mall already. Your new traditions sound wonderful. Am thinking of changing things for next year so just might have to pinch a couple of your ideas.

Anonymous said...

Wow a 10am start! ... I can't remember when I last slept in till 10am! We do a Xmas eve dinner too ... but we do our big feast then, which is great because we then don't have heaps of cooking on Christmas day, but plenty of left-overs to eat.
We love taking our time with the pressie opening too ... sounds like you have had a fantastic xmas so far ... very nice.

CathQuillScrap said...

Merry Christmas Helen. Sounds like you've had lots of fun and excitement. Enjoy the family time.