Merry christmas everyone! I hope you all had fun celebrating with your family, friends, loved ones or having a wonderful day regardless. The holidays are such a wonderful time of the year, all the build up and the excitement really brings everything all together. I always find myself feeling a bit like a deflated capri-sun when its all over because of these reasons, but this doesn’t make it any less exciting!

I always thought growing up christmas was incredible, until i had children. Then i realised that christmas can be even more exciting watching them enjoy it as much as you remember from when you were a child. My eldest is starting to really feel the magic of it all for the first year and i cherished that throughout. We’ve spent the last month “calling santa” on my phone, tracking santa with NORAD on christmas eve and opening advent calendars with, believe it or not, very little arguments on the fact that they were only allowed to open one door a day! That itself is complete bliss as a parent, am i right?

My boys did well from all family members and friends this year, we are so incredibly grateful for that. even the small token gifts were just perfect and we could not have wished for anything better.

We woke them up at a respectable time of 7.30am, its pure bliss at the moment knowing that they are getting to the age of feeling the christmas excitement but we aren’t greeted with the 5am wake up calls just yet.. Me and my partner managed to get a nice cup of coffee (and drink it whilst it was hot) before chaos descended upon our living room. well, i say this but my 26 year old fiancé decided that 6.30 was a great time to wake me up with “babe! when shall we get the kids up?” erm, they are asleep so definitely not yet! (thats the nicer version of what i probably said to him in those early hours..)

The living room was full of christmas lights and music for when my three excited children came downstairs, their little faces lit up and it was all “wooooow” and “santas been!” and all smiles from my 6 month old. We are a practical family when it comes to presents from us, the usual small toys and stocking fillers but we like to give them things they need aswell as things they want, also in our family its stockings from santa and presents from family. so this meant that the children had more fun looking for their items in amongst presents for other people. Each had a different wrapping paper which turned it into a fun game looking for their gifts. Amongst some small token toys and books, they also got a nice outfit to wear on the day. coffee in hand, dressing gown on, hair actually brushed and put back into the faithful mum bun, i sat and watched my living room become a bomb site, for once this was pure christmas bliss.

Christmas wouldn’t be christmas without mum and her trusty bin bag. this was me frantically picking up bits and pieces of paper and labels, toy boxes and chocolate wrappers (come on its christmas so chocolate for breakfast is acceptable in my books) of the floor ready for my mum, step dad and brothers to come round for brunch. Everything i do now takes me back to when i was younger, i learnt all my parenting tips from my mum and its such a sweet memory knowing that i’m like her. I’ll never measure up to how much of an incredible woman she is but i damn sure try my hardest and i know this makes her more and more proud every single day.

Brunch and champagne for us began with the popping of corks and crusty bread with italian meats, olives and various other little bites. Drinking prosecco and gossiping with my mum at 10am was acceptable to say the least. Especially on christmas day, its 5pm somewhere in the world 😉 we didn’t do presents, just small tokens as we will be celebrating on the 29th for my grandmas birthday. She sadly left us a few years back and we celebrate her birthday as a family every year in her memory, which will mean more prosecco and more buffet food! Her favourite.

This brings me to another point about christmas, remembering your loved ones who are no longer with us goes without saying, but no one tells you how difficult it is years after they pass. The first time you spend a birthday or holiday without them can be very tough, but you can reminisce on the previous year and memories you have together. I by all means don’t mean its going to get easier as the years go on but i do believe they can be harder for different reasons. You don’t have the beauty of being able to say “do you remember last christmas when…” because you don’t have a last christmas, you have a 2 or 3 years ago christmas. People deal with grief in various ways but it can be slightly harder when its around the holiday, so we all need to be mindful of this. I remembered my grandma, and others who are no longer with us yesterday by tucking into some whole nut dairy milk (we used to secret eat this together – sorry family!), lighting a candle and raising a glass to all the wonderful people we have lost.

The rest of the days celebrations consisted of more presents and excitement, bucks fizz, turkey and all the trimmings and so much love and happiness. We played games and sang songs and enjoyed every second. I am so grateful to everyone who made this time of year such a wonderful and happy time for us. We really do appreciate it. I hope that everyone had a wonderful christmas and continue to celebrate if they have more to come. we have two more days of family celebrations left and then to prepare for the new year.

I’m currently sitting here writing this blog post whilst building up the momentum to deal with the onslaught of bags that are coming back from my inlaws as my partners just gone round there to pick everything up.

I’m like a coiled spring, with my bin bag ready.

Thanks for reading and i hope you all enjoy the holidays as much as we are.

KT. ❤