Turning back Time (Part 1)

Date: Friday 17th December 2010 to Saturday 25th December 2010.

Following a brilliant week at Centre Parcs, our family headed home.
Driving through the beautiful wintery Norfolk scenery, spirits high, and thoughts of the upcoming festivities flooding our thoughts, all was happy and good.

That was, of course, until we walked through our front door.

The 3 year old, who had been fine all day, suddenly showered herself with vast quantities of vomit. This continued though the night and for around the next 12 hours. The 5 year old followed her sisters lead the next day and the baby developed conjunctivitis.

No sooner had this all taken place, when a slow leak in the bathroom near rendered the living room a swimming pool and left a gaping hole in the ceiling.

So the plumber arrived and broke the bath panel, the plasterer arrived and patched up the ceiling and the plumber returned with a new bath panel, in the wrong colour, was here was 2 and a half hours and still managed to mess up a job my 7 year old could have done in ten minutes flat.

In the meantime, while we all had our backs turned, a mega dose of stealth flu, snuck up on the unsuspecting, newly recovered 3 year old and reduced her to a snot dribbling, whingy, knackered, sobbing mess.


With the Christmas tree still firmly lodged between piles of old baby clothes and cringe worthy first music purchases from the '80's, we were still a long way off of Yule Tide flare.

Our planned week of making traditional Christmas decorations for a retro festive look was fast becoming a nightmare.

Luckily, even with a mucus infested toddler, we managed an entire afternoon of paper chain making.
The tree finally went up, only for the lights not to work.

A manic dash to the supermarket at 11pm in the run up to the big day was surprising fraught, and I cursed Drew for not letting me put up the damn tree before our holiday.
Lights purchased, the tree was fully made up for it's first appearance with an audience of four expectant children.

Phew. It passed the test.



Salt dough was next on the agenda. Now I do *not* recommend this to anyone who requires any kind of sanity in the few days prior to the 25th. Seriously, this stuff takes a long time to dry, even in the oven, do not leave it to the last minute!

Paper snowflakes were made while all of the Salt dough spent the best part of 24hours in the oven drying out.









Then our family Christmas tree was constructed.
Using coloured in cut outs of all 6 family members hands, the tree was erected and beautifully displayed for all to see. (This being a personal favourite of ours) The kids then made little cut out decorations for it and stuck them on with blu-tac.

Paper Angels were crafted along side many other paper based creations and voila, our Christmas was starting to come together.

Salt dough FINALLY dried, the painting commenced. The girls loved doing this and it will be something that we will do again, but much, much earlier in the month..

The final craft activity, and the most important one, was the making of the stockings!
I was immensely impressed with the sewing skills of the big girls and even my little ill girl had a good go (with a little.. (OK, a lot) of help from Mummy) They then decorated them themselves (all except Che, who's stocking was made by me, well, he is only 13months!) I think they all came out remarkably well.

 

Before bed, the traditional Christmas stories and a quick check on Santa's progress!

Keeping an eye on Santa Via the Norad site

The snot oozing, fever ridden 3 year old, still far too ill for family visits, left time for a last minute wrapping frenzy to take place on Christmas Eve.

The over excited kids and the exhausted fluey one headed to their beds early in eager await for Santa, whilst Drew stayed up til almost 1am waiting for the Norad Santa tracking site to show the big fella delivering to good old Blighty.

Yes, yes, I know, he is a child.*shakes head, while rolling eyes, and tutting*