First Christmas

Fuzzy and I celebrated our birthdays this year with Chubbs, and soon we'll spend our first Christmas together ever! This has always been my favourite time of the year. As kids, my best friend, Rissy, and I, would talk about Christmas weeks on end prior to the day, and would run around excitedly greeting everyone Merry Christmas eve. I love the sparkling lights, decorated trees, holiday spirit, familiar carols, shiny bow-tied presents, obscene amounts of food (especially chocolates, my favourite thing)... and everyone always seems to be in a happy mood. Maybe because we get two public holidays in a week, with New Year's round the corner. The only thing I dread is the shopping. It's stressful because I want the perfect gift for everyone and the hoards of manic shoppers in town don't help. I recall many years of scouring the shops with Yee (my dearest aunt) on the 24th, frantically looking for that elusive prezzie. Procrastination always got, and still gets the better of us.

Christmas this year will be very different. All of Chubbs' grandies will be away, Rissy's holidaying, Yee will be Down Under, so there won't be the usual extended family parties. It'll just be my hubby, my son and I. I'm really excited because I'm looking to create certain Christmas traditions that are unique to our little family. I want Chubbs to be able to associate this holiday with specific family memories such as opening prezzies round the tree, hot chocolate and pancakes for breakfast, turkey stew for lunch etc, so that he can think back on these memories fondly and remind himself of home if he is ever away for Christmas in future. Of course, he must also understand the meaning behind Christmas itself. That it is Jesus Christ's birthday.

I have yet to come up with the Christmas day "plan" exactly. But for sure, it will be a awesome day packed with laughter, hugs and kisses, with carols playing in the background. We will dress in festive colours/outfits (I want to dress baby up as an elf), have champagne, eat lots of chocolates... and most importantly provide many special treats that we will grow to look forward to yearly. Maybe I'll bake a butter and sugar brioche (Fuzzy's favourite), or roast a turkey with all the trimmings, or make pork crackling, or put together a logcake, or torch a creme brulee...I can go on all day. Yum!

 Happy Christmas everyone!