Our Christmas

With the first day of the school term mercifully in sight its a good time to report on our Christmas 2009 experience.  Festivities started early this year with Tracys family coming over on the 12th because they would be in Australia for Christmas and New year for her brother David 's wedding to Becky. I know Tracy would have loved to have gone as would have I , but we knew that the logistics of doing the trip would be very difficult so we had to decide several months ago that we would have to settle for congratulating them at their UK party in the New Year . One of the advantages of doing Christmas in stages is that the present overload syndrome is minimised.   We took he boys to see Santa at the grotto  at Painshill Park on Christmas Eve and were greeted by the first Santa Ive met with a strong Saarf London accent.  I doubt that even the most devout believers were convinced; needless to say the boys weren't, with the video footage clearly picking up Jakes comment "he's sooo fake" ringing throughout the grottos caverns.

Christmas Day kicked of at 7.00 sharp , although the boys would have started several hours earlier given the chance and we got little sleep as a result . Once the first wave of mayhem had subsided Tracy escaped to walk the dogs while I got up.Round two started later in the morning with the bigger presents from us  . . . . . well you don't want santa to get too much credit , with round 3 commencing in the afternoon once my family had arrived , although only after we had forced the boys  to partake in a Christmas day dog walk . Luke insisted on wearing his newly aquired santa suit . Back home to dispatch the final round of unwrapping before the well earned lunch. Afterwards , David, Sue and the girls were put in charge of toy assembly and setup including the Guitar Hero complete band which as you can see from my previous post , kept them well entertained .

The remainder of the holiday has been relatively quiet apart from three 9 year old boys bouncing off the walls. we met up with friends in London and visited the London Dungeons which everybody enjoyed . Despite our pleas they refused to let us leave the boys there as an exhibit, on the basis that they were too scarey. On New Years Eve we all went to see Treasure Island at The Rose Theatre in Kingston , bucking the trend of the traditional panto.  It was an enjoyable production although the wordy narrative , while probably faithful to the book , made it less accessible to the younger audience .  we didn't venture out anywhere in the evening but we let the boys stay up until midnight to watch the fireworks on TV.