Christmas

On Sunday we went to my brother's house where he cooked us our second "family" Christmas meal before him and my SIL and nephew went over to Hungary to spend Christmas with her family.

Mum had done turkey, so Leslie did duck and goose, and then in the evening we had another buffet spread. The boys were in seventh heaven! The afternoon was marred however by how unwell my nephew was. In the end Dora took him to the emergency doctor at the hospital (they live almost next door to it) and it turned out that the poor kid had whooping cough. He has had all his childhood vaccinations so fortunately it turned out to only be mild, but still it wasn't nice. It also meant we were all exposed to another virus.... (more of that later)

As any of you with SEN kids, particularly ASD kids know, this time of year can actually be hellish (in fact it can be hellish for a number of reasons!) so, along with how Roarke and I feel at this time of year, we weren't necessarily looking forward to it.

However, praise God, we actually had a really nice time! This was due to a few main factors.

Firstly, we got over the (first) bout of flu/virus/colds and so were all relatively "fit".

Secondly, we had an unexpected guest for Christmas Day. Someone who had no one else to be with on Christmas Day and so was very happy to be surrounded by our mayhem for 10 hours or so. Our boys love having guests, and we've brought them up very much to be aware of what, for us, is the REAL message of Christmas, and also to be aware of how tough it is for some people, so they loved having Clive with us. Having a guest gave Roarke and I something else to focus on, instead of all our "issues" about the day, which was great.

We enjoyed sharing our food, and our time and attention, with Clive and he truly made it the successful day that it was. (We'd settled on chicken (as we'd had every other type of fowl so far!) and had saved up to get a lovely big organic free range chicken which was just perfect. I've been baking all over the past 2 weeks and so we've had two gf cf Christmas cakes, gf cf mince pies, and a variety of biscuits. Actually I've enjoyed having the reason for so much "real" cooking and, even if I say so myself, we've had some mighty fine meals!)

Thirdly, we bought a wii!!!! The boys had NO idea AT ALL that we had been planning to get one as we'd made it clear since last year that is was outside of our price range. They knew that we had said we were buying joint presents instead of seperate ones, in order to make the money go further. In fact, one of Roarke's acting jobs provided just enough "extra" than we were budgeting for that we decided to go for it.

This meant the whole family had something that they could do together, instead of kids disappearing off to their rooms with their own toys, or complaining that "he won't share"...

Roarke and I enjoyed competing against each other on wii sports, being so very competitive! The boys also got Madagascar II, Clone Wars Light Saber Duel, and a Star Trek game which have all served to keep them quiet.

Roarke has gone from a wii fit "age" of 67 (ha ha!) to 24 (he wishes!) and I've gone from something like 50 down to 27 (again, I wish!)

However poor Roarke fell foul of the virus that we were all exposed to from my nephew (Leslie and Dora also had heavy colds and bad coughs) and has come down with a second chest infection. Worse than the last one, he's been in agony and barely able to move. He's now on a double dose of antibiotics, plus two different lots of painkillers including the ones from last time that send him to sleep as soon as he takes them! (lightweight!). Its a good job it didn't start till after Boxing Day.

Here are a few pictures from over the festive season:

my Christmas comme chef...

William opening a present at my brother's house:

Jonathan being helped with opening yet more Night Garden presents (at Leslie's):

Brotherly love!

Our beautiful elf!