Christmas Wrap up!!!

Ok, so here is my only mention of this and then I'll try and be all positive and happy: This was the first Christmas without my Mom. Bev loved Christmas, she loved giving and recieving gifts, she loved the food, the family, parties, everything. The lot. She ate it all in. So it was hard this year. Hard to not get calls from her about gifts for other loved ones, hard to not shop for her, just hard. Not "spoil the fun" hard, or "god, I need a drink now" hard. Just a kind of dull ache at times.

Anyway, the wrap up:

On the morning of the 24th we had our little family Christmas: I'd got croissant etc from the local baker, fancy coffee from the place we get our beans ($15/half pound, and still not the most expensive) and we set the table etc first thing. We opened our gifts and Lucas was happy and so were we. Lucas got spoiled, and both Chris and I managed to get each other things that we both wanted/needed/loved. It was really nice. Since we had managed to get everything wrapped on the 23rd we managed to relax the rest of the day until we went to my Mother in Laws that night.

24th Part II: French Canadians traditionally celebrate Christmas at night on the 24th so we always to go Christine's Moms place that night. We ate chicken pot pie, turkey, Buche de Noel etc etc etc (too much etc mb) and opened our tons of gifts. It's amazing how on years where everyone buys electronic presents the gift pile is so much smaller, but so much more expensive. One of the highlights of the evening for me was when the two boys, Lucas and his cousin Anthony, took some battery powered cupboard lights ( can't figure out how to explain that better) and went into the bathroom, turned off the lights, got into the bathtub and pulled the shower curtain closed. They then sat in there turning on and off their lights and laughing... if anyone came to see what they were doing Lucas would defend their parameter with his weapon of choice, the toliet brush (which surely counts as a biological weapon).

The 25th we went to Dad's, Marjorie and Darren were there and Lea and Nathalie came a bit later. We opened even more gifts and ate and ate and ate. At this point, it should be mentioned that I clearly ate too much, or ate the wrong thing or something, because I didn't get to keep my Christmas dinner, in so much as I stored it for a few hours...

We slept over at Dad's and I made Chocolate Pancakes for breakfast and then we came home and collapsed in bed.

I'm going to need a holiday from my holidays. (There will be pics on my .mac site soon, within the next 2 days for sure).