Christmas (part 2)
I love being at holiday and at home. Very often I use my holiday allowance from work to go away with the family. The big summer holiday in the long school break. A week at Easter away with my parents. A short camping trip. These are lovely things, but to me there is a treat in being at home and not having to work and not having to dash around to fit in the weekend chores. I enjoy being surrounded by my books and my games and my family.
I love that Christmas stimulates my craftingness. This is the second year I have hand made Christmas crackers for the kids. It’s well known that you can’t have a proper Dec 25th meal without crackers, but the little gifts inside are often not majorly exciting. So last year I decided to make my own crackers, starting with choosing more interesting gifts, and working outwards. I bought diy kits from hobbycraft last year, this year I got the make-the-crack-noise things from ebay and did the rest myself. I had to use plastic lemonade bottles halves rather than toilet roll tubes to fit the gifts in, so they turned out rather mutant crackers, but all good fun. I didn’t end up using half of the gift ideas I’d come up with – so they will carry forward to next year.
I turned the advent calendar into a mini treasure hunt. We have a nativity with 24 wooden pieces, which we slowly assemble through advent. This year each slot in the advent calender contains, not a tissue wrapped piece, but a clue to where in the house a tissue wrapped piece may be found. I’ve tried to make the clues age-relevent, so Becca’s little sheep rather rather easier to find than JM’s king 2. Matt was almost late for school last week when he couldn’t find the palm tree, but I’m taking that as part of the enjoyment, in spite of his scowling at me. Currently pondering if I should use the same clues next year, or make them even more cunning!
I love buying gifts for the kids. There is always that wilderness experience of realising that <insert childs name> has suddenly grown and is no longer interested in the sort of gifts that went down a storm last year. But just occasionally inspiration strikes, or you just get lucky, and you know it’s been worthwhile. This year I had some extra savings and was able to spend a little more on a special post-lunch gift which I’m hoping will buy their love for another year :p
I love getting to play games with the family over Christmas. We are all into various sorts of games – card games, boardgames, quiz games, wargames. Some require lots of skill and concentration, some require a good vocabulary or artistic skills, some just require an annoying amount of luck. Quite a few end up being played for chocolate, just to raise the stakes. But they are all cute opportunities to sit around the table, and spend time together, and have some fun.
