I often feel like I am playing catch up on the Blog these days.
I don’t post as much – I’m well – and I feel as though I shouldn’t write unless I have something new to say. It would of course be remiss of me not to mention Christmas…and the fact that it was a happy, calm, healthy(ish) affair.
Christmas…the icing on the cake for the year…the single day piled so high with expectation & anticipation that people forget it is just 1 day…as opposed to an entire month!
In many way’s I think I prefer Boxing Day…and the calmer days that follow afterwards.
Christmas is wonderful & magical and all that…but it always seems over too quickly. Like a blur it’s happened & done and all that remains is a HUGE amount of leftover food, mountains of recycling Bags full of wrapping paper & empty boxes….everywhere!

Also – and I don’t know if its age or just me…but I just don’t eat that much on Christmas day anymore. The house smells of food all day, the dinner table gets laden with every item of veg on the planet dripping with butter, & by the time you all sit down to eat “you are full”…. It’s like the smells have convinced you that you have been eating all day already…so much so that in our house over ¾ of the Turkey was left…we just about glanced at the desserts & completely forgot the Cheese/biscuit/salad malarkey planned for the evening snacking.
Now Boxing Day is a different matter.
It starts as any decent Boxing day should…..with Trifle!
I make trifle every year just so that I get to eat trifle for a week for breakfast!…one year we didn’t make a trifle but bought one…and my father in law had some on Christmas day…and so did my son….my tiny trifle only lasted 2 days!! I was that traumatised that we had to go back into the supermarket the very next day to get another trifle or I wouldn’t have anything to eat for breakfast!
After breakfast & a play of yesterday’s opened toys, we don ourselves in various items of clothing we received as gifts, pull on “sensible shoes” and walk…to the pub.
We live at the top of a hill – a very big hill on the edge of a valley & the pub we like to go to is at the top of another hill the other side of said valley…so it is a decent stretch of the legs.
A quick pint or 3 later and the designated driver (my mother in law) then carts us home.
Now this is where Boxing day comes into its own…we walk into the house..which is filled with the smell of Christmas. Not because we didn’t ventilate as is customary after too many sprouts but because whilst we were imbibing in liquid appetisers the oven timer went off & started to bake the trays of Bubble & Squeak prepared earlier.
A few drinks & the walk have worked up an appetite by this time….and better still because it’s been baking in the oven there are just a few plates & trays to bung into the dishwasher…not like the mountain of pans & serving platters that seem to monopolise Christmas Day afternoon.
Minutes later the board games come out & possibly even a bottle of wine.
The carnage of the tidying up of Christmas gifts can wait….the mountain of Cheese & biscuits can too…there are several days of Christmas yet to cater for. Boxing day wins for me every year!
We had snow here in Gloucestershire, which was a brilliant treat…and we even managed to get the sledges out of the loft that we had purchased about 4 years ago after the last snowfall & not used since!
I am something of a big girls blouse when it comes to snow. I utterly love it, I get excited beyond imagination watching it fall & cannot wait to get out in it….but throw a snowball at me from the wrong angle & I cease to find pleasure it the cold white stuff. I last until my toes get too cold to move & then plead to go home and warm up…then annoying everyone around me a mere 2 hours later I am ready to go back out in the snow again for another walk in “magicland”!
I love the time we get over Christmas, the fact that my little people are older & can get involved in the building of the toys they have received rather than sit there like exasperated puppies whining because the build isn’t completed yet….it’s worse than driving long journeys!
I’m not so keen on the loosing of crucial parts of said build….it happens every year & merely signifies that it is time to clean up the mess the house has become in order to find the parts from under the tree or sofa or pile of empty boxes.
It means Christmas is over. New Year passes with a wave & token firework or two & then like a nuclear bomb the school term hits. No matter how prepared we might like to think we are…that first day hurts….all day.
And so it’s 2018. It’s set to be a big year for us.
The Mr gets to turn 50 in just a few days time so an escape is needed to ring that bell. Followed almost immediately by something of an adventure….a house move that entails a re-build involving a house that isn’t liveable in for a good 6 months.
I have the 2018 conference to prepare for & I have what I am hoping will be my 5 year NED Cancerversary to aim towards in June. Then if I am really, really lucky I can turn 40 being both healthy & under the roof of my new home!
It’s a lot to cram into a year.
Christmas was everything it needed to be – a battery re-charge – because we are going to need it!