The Rooke Family Blog: December 2018

Monday, 17 December 2018

Christmastress and the Polar Express...

Emily to Daddy on the phone: "Mummy just said shit. Only it wasn't shit she said. It was worse than that."

Ah the joy of Christmas! A time of peace, joy, love and happiness...and Christmastress.

Christmastress - adjective - a feeling of intense stress associated with the joy of Christmas.

So whilst Christmas has plenty of fun and laughter, there's also always a sprinkling of Christmastress added into the mix. As the big day beckons kids get more and more tired and need to deal with more and more excitement. Plus inevitably there's always a plethora of bugs going round at this time of year. In the last weeks I've looked at the girls with ever increasing bags under their eyes - desperate to have fun but desperately running out of the energy to cope with it all. Eventually it cracks and someone (child or adult) loses it.

In addition to that the Rooke household has the Curse of the Christmas Tree to deal with. I've blogged about this before but in essence every year something goes wrong on the day we go to buy the Christmas Tree. And this year was no exception as I didn't even make the tree buying due to an emergency trip to Birmingham. It also meant stir-up Sunday was in December, not November - but hey - who's counting...

Still we've had plenty of Christmas fun times too, and we're starting to collect a few annual rituals along the way. There's been the Kirky lights switch on and drinks with friends, a Victorian Christmas, the annual Daddy-Daughter Christmas day out, and this year's highlight has to be the Santa Train at Bo'ness. Top-tastic Christmas fun. There's been plenty of crafting, cooking, baking, singing and dancing too. Plus we even squeezed a trip to North Berwick in for an early Christmas gathering with the Gedik and Gurney clans.

But another highlight this year has definitely been Niomi's singing. About two years ago Niomi said nothing, and then a year ago she sang her first words. And now? Well now, she's taken great delight in learning all the songs for her nativity and any number of other Christmas hits you care to name. She might not always be the clearest but her effort, commitment and courage is clearly not in doubt - a true Christmas star. You go girl!!