Christmas comes early...

So if we thought that 2016 started with a bang with massive house alterations, it looks like 2017 is going to start with a huge KABOOM as the Children's Panel has just agreed the next stage of our adoption journey. Niomi is a wonderful little girl who is nearly 2 - and we just can't wait for her to be part of our lives. The process of her moving to us will start early in January, and she'll have fully moved to us by the middle of the month. I'll post more as we go on, but suffice to say for now, we are completely delighted at our early Christmas present - truly the best surprise ever 😊😊😊.

A very Merry Christmas to you all...N, T and E x

A Christmas angel...

My own wee Santa

Swapping roles to be Rudolf

Every year I try and do a Daddy/Daughter Christmas Day in the run up to the event itself. And this year's had a strict itinerary which got followed to the letter.

9.30am Shove Mummy out the door on a spa day, with instructions not to come back till late.

9.31am Cushion and blanket the lounge to make cosy/comfy seating and watch "The Polar Express".

11.12am Start making my Grandma's famous date krispie recipe with Emily. 

11.33am Head out to Lidl to do Christmas shop for the local foodbank. Slight jealous jelly incident with Emily, but other than that all purchases happily sent to a good cause.

12.23pm Lunch. Not much eaten as excitement building for afternoon's events.

12.34 to 1.23pm Jumping School and Cushion Attack.

1.24pm Head to train station ridiculously early as Supreme Being is intensely excited about trip to Glasgow. Promised that "it's OK to be early Daddy - we can play games". I'm not convinced.

1.31 to 1.51pm A very long 20 mins of eye-spy with 4 year old jumping up and down with excitement.

2.06 to 3.15pm Tour of festive market, spotting 2 ginormous Christmas trees and whizz round on the merry-go-round

Delight on the merry-go-round

3.15 to 4.06pm Theatre trip to see "The Night After Christmas" (highly recommended for 3-6 year olds). Massive snacking of mini-marshmallows throughout (don't tell Mummy) on account of poor lunch effort.

4.06 to 4.15pm Massive sprint across town with flagging 4 year-old on shoulders "Don't worry if we miss it Daddy, we can get the next one." (It was an hour to wait - too long for eye-spy). We made it - just.

4.37 to 6.02pm Chicken and chips - Emily's favourite. 

6.02 to 6.28pm "Daddy I'm sooo tired. Can I watch Peter Rabbit? Pleeeeeease". Of course.

6.28pm Storytime.

7.03pm Bed and sleep.

Daddy/Daughter Christmas Day done. Major success - celebratory bottle of beer drunk.

And then 5 days later, my little angel was an angel in the nursery nativity. Tear in eye at an oscar-winning performance. Wonderful. Boy am I excited about Christmas this year.

Vidoeclip: We wish you a Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone

The most wonderful time of the year...

As you know I LOVE Christmas. And our festivities are already well underway having started on the last weekend in November with the annual trip to buy the Christmas tree. It was a pretty tight schedule this year as the project where we go opened at 3pm, and we needed to be back for Kirkintilloch lights switch on at 5pm...plus we had to squeeze in some post tree buying mulled wine/mince pies with friends and neighbours. But we did it...well over 20ft of green needle clad joy was purchased by 3 families, plenty of stollen and mince pies consumed, plus a few mugs of warming spiced wine to give us a nice glow; and we still made the lights and subsequent fireworks with minutes to spare.

Emi doing her bit

Videoclip: Lights switch on!!

And then it really all began. The next day was Christmas tunes all day as stir-up Sunday meant the pudding got made with everyone having three wishes each (Emily was not content with one). And then it was a week of Christmas craft making and excited debate on Christmas, before December began with a bang as we decorated the house and brought light to the dark winter months. The festive season can just bring out so much joy and excitement if you can avoid the commercialism of it all.

We've done Victorian Santa, made masses of decorations including a brilliant 'stick' tree, started prepping and freezing lots of food, but most importantly, we've spent some wonderful time as a family just indulging our 'inner children' and our Supreme Being. It's brought a hearty glow to winter darkness and Emily really is getting into the full Christmas swing. The highlight for me so far was Emily meeting a wonderful Santa and Mrs Claus at our Victorian Christmas event. It was exactly as it should have been - just a lovely noncommercial and traditional experience. Last year Emily was terrified of Santa but now she's really starting to embrace his magical self...there's going to be one very excited Supreme Being by the time we get to Christmas Eve as there's lots more still to come!!

Stir-up Sunday

Videoclip: What happens at Christmas

Videoclip: Christmas deliveries

 The tree is up!

Emily, Santa and Mrs Claus