In my head, my perfect Christmas Day starts off with the kids running into our bedroom looking photo ready in their new Christmas pyjamas with their teeth brushed and their hair tidy and brushed. That’s what happens in the movies isn’t it?
What actually happens in our house is that I lay in bed waiting for everyone to wake up until I can’t stand it any longer and start making as much noise as possible in an attempt to wake everyone up. Last Christmas I had to fake two coughing fits, flush the toilet twice and drop a book on the floor just to get everyone moving.
When everyone’s finally awake and we’ve all sat together on our bed and opened the stocking presents we’ll go downstairs to see if Santa’s been with the rest of the presents. I like us to open our presents in turn so I guess my perfect Christmas Day wouldn’t include the inevitable arguing over who opens their present first and it would be great if we didn’t have to resort to tossing a coin to decide who wins this one! Bucks Fizz would be lovely at this point to get me through the stress 😉
Taken just before the annual coin toss / argument
A perfect Christmas would mean that I remembered to buy all the batteries for the toys and I’d made sure that we had the right screwdrivers for the battery covers. We had Furby related traumas last year when we couldn’t unscrew Ninja’s bottom to put the batteries in. Mr Frugal ended up having to use a vegetable knife which could have ended in disaster as I’d have had to wash the pots if he’d injured his hand!
Buddy Vs Ninja
After all the presents are opened and it’s time to play with some of them, it would be lovely if they chose one of their nice new books to read rather than the biggest loudest toy that’s going to annoy me to the point where I have to tell them to take it out of the room before I ring Santa and tell him to come back for it. Note to self: Just don’t buy noisy toys anymore!
Playing with their toys at Grandads
Oh, and a perfect Christmas would mean that no toys need building – poor Mr Frugal has wasted many an hour on Christmas afternoon trying to figure out how on earth something works or put something together (usually ignoring the instructions by the way)!
Mr Frugal building yet another toy
Christmas lunch is perfect as it is really as we go to my Dads for a couple of hours and get to spend a fun few hours having a lovely Christmas meal and catching up. The onlything that would make that part of the day would be if someone didn’t have to explain at least one of the cracker jokes to me.
By the time we get home, it’s late afternoon and it’s time to relax a little, or at least it would be if the kids didn’t need to test out everything they’ve been given – one by one. This usually involves the dog trying to get involved by running off with random toy parts and thinking it’s great when one or both children chase him round the house narrowly missing knocking the tree over and standing on half the new presents.
Trying our five new toys at once
It’s Christmas movie time next and that’s pretty perfect too – blankets, pillows and selection boxes at the ready to watch one of our favourite Christmas films together. We top this off with hot chocolate and marshmallows and then it’s to time to bed for the little people.
When they’re settled in bed, I like to have a nice relaxing bubble bath to round off the day using some of my new smellies (I always get them – I think someone’s trying to tell me something) and as usual, as soon as my toe hits the bathwater I can hear the bedroom doors open as they both come and sit on the floor next to the bath to talk to me. I was going to say that a perfect Christmas Day would mean that I got to enjoy my bath in peace but actually, I love it when they sit and chat with me like this.
In fact, I actually love everything about our family Christmas – from the sleepy children to the missing batteries and from the noisy toys to the interrupted bath.
It’s might not be most people’s perfect but it’s mine.
Merry Christmas! This post is my entry into the Tots100/Argos 12 Days of Christmas competition.
