I love Christmas!

I love Christmas in fact I adore Christmas. I love presents both giving and receiving them, I love wrapping them and having them out on display with a myraid of coloured wrapping paper on them. I love thinking about presents and compiling a list of who is getting what. I love shopping for presents. I love all that encompasses the idea and the delivery of presents. I always spend too much on my dear ones (i.e. hubby and bubby), though this year I have restrained myself a little. I love Christmas trees and little baubles and tinsel and mistletoe and the angel on top or the star, I love door decorations and fairy lights. I love sending and receiving cards. I love Santa and in fact I am going to brace the crowds and attempt to get a photo of darling Dylan with Santa. I love the food the festivities the pudding the lollies the nuts the seafood. I love the looks on the kids faces when they see Santa and open their pressies. I love it all. Ooooohhhh I love love love it! I love people who love it.

I have wonderful memories of Christmases at my grandma's house she would have a little tree but it would have lots of presents underneath it. Her presents were usually pretty average but it was the thrill of the surprise that maybe this year would be the year she would get us something good. She lived right on the beach and her living room was on the second storey and she would have her christmas lights pinned up on the wall facing the street shaped like a christmas tree and if you walked or drove past you could see it. It was magical. She would always do a traditional Christmas lunch, seafood cocktail for entree, roast turkey and cold ham with all the vegies for mains and pudding with coins in it for dessert. Plus she would have all these ridiculous extras on the table which we rarely ate like nuts in the shells where you would have to use a nutracker to open them, glace fruit, and so on. We would stuff ourselves and then walk on the beach or have a nap and then we would stuff ourselves some more for dinner. Then on Boxing Day we would often see our dad and our other grandma and our grandpa and auntie and cousins and there would be a big tree and bags full of presents and more stuffing of our faces. Ahhhhh sublime. I have always loved Christmas.

But I seem to be in a family that doesn't love it as much as me, sigh! My mum does not have a tree anymore, she doesn't cook a hot dinner or a pudding. We do see her but she would gladly not see us if I didn't insist. She does buy presents but she doesn't wrap them anymore she puts them in a bag, a nice christmassy bag but a bag none the less. In fact she said to me the other day "I am just not a Christmas type of person" and that made me quite sad. On the other hand my in laws do do Christmas quite well, we always have Christmas lunch with them and they do a proper hot lunch with all the trimmings (although it is very rarely turkey) they usually have a seafood entree and wine/champagne, plus my fave plum pudding with lashings of cream, mmmmmmmmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about it. They also do presents well they always wrap them and my husbands brother and his wife do it well too, BIL will often be wearing a Santa hat, there will be crackers and we all tell the jokes and get excited about the plastic trinkets and we wear the hats. The one drawback is that they don't usually have a big tree, just a small one on the table. My husband is not into Christmas either and doesn't get the same thrill or childish excitment as I do. He would probably be happy to do without like my mum but I insist with him too and in fact I am going to try and get him more exicted because now we have a child and last year we decided together that we would bring Dylan up with Santa Claus as he and I both had growing up. So need to work on the hubby a bit. Even my brother who is down in the dumps about two break ups this year will not be in the Christmas spirit as he usually is. One year him and his now ex girlfried even dressed up their pets and took photos. I suppose I don't blame him for being a bit over it he has had a rough two years relationship wise and Christmas is better when you have someone to share it with!

This year the adults on my hubands side have decided (I wasn't consulted) that we are not 'doing' presents not even a KK, when hubby told me I almost broke down and cried I was so sad. But instead I got mad. I said "No one tells me who I can and can't buy presents for!" And I was also a little sad that I wouldn't be getting any presents as they are good at presents. But I have rebelled and have bought FIL a present I intend to buy MIL a present and in fact I may even buy the other adults one to stick it in their faces, in a defiant act! One other sad fact about this year is that we just don't have the room at our place for a large, deliciously pine smelling, festive tree as our little flat is just so cramped with all our stuff I have seen some small plastic (eeek) ones around so may get one of those. I would love for Dylan and any other children we have (read want two more) to have wonderful Christmas memories growing up and if they can't get them from the grandparents as I did then I will have to create these memories for them at home. And I have already started. If no one else is excited I will be and I hope that Dylan will be too.

The photo at the top is of 'Christmas Dylan' from last year. He is in the spirit already yay!