The big event

So after all that preparation, the big event finally arrived!

Our Christmas was lovely, we do appreciate how close we live to our families now, no more 7 hour drives or overnight ferry rides to get from one to the other. This year we were with my in-laws in Quimperlé from the Sunday, 2 of hubbys siblings were there too with their partners and children which made 8 adults and 6 children in total. We had a nice big meal on the night of the 24th, a typical festive meal in France consists of aperitifs, a starter such as smoked salmon and blinis and/or foie gras on little toasts (this year with pain d'epice which had to be the best combination I've ever tasted!), some sort of fish dish, cheese and then dessert, we finished with my homemade "buches de noel", which turned out very well indeed.

Before the kids went to bed, we all put out our "souliers" which is a shoe or a slipper under the Christmas tree, so that Papa Noel would find it and know where to leave our presents!

Funnily enough on Christmas morning, nearly all of the adults were up and about before the children! It was 9am by the time everyone was awake and had eaten their breakfast,  the little ones queued up outside the living room before Papy and Mamy opened the doors for them to see the room full of presents!

It's always a wonderful moment as the kids look for their shoe to find their presents! Laila could read the names this year, so she was quick to know which ones were for her. She had one eye on her presents and one eye on what her cousin Nina was opening next to her! Max found the most important present first and we struggled getting him to open his gifts before digging in!

After the kids have opened theirs, us parents get to open ours, and then the grandparents. As all the presents are from "Papa Noel", myself and my sister in law always discreetly try to find out who gave what so we can thank each other!

We then get to play with the toys, and as the kids are getting older, this gets more interesting. Although Cuisto Dingo (Pop the Pig) was the most popular, it may not be particularly educational, but it was fun!

After another big meal for lunch (same starter and dessert, but this time a big Capon with potatoes for the main course), we packed up our things and drove just over an hour to my parents house. They had spent Christmas Eve and most of Christmas Day on their own, although I believe they had a lot of phone calls and skype calls from abroad to keep them busy! Plus of course (UK) Christmas telly, which we were delighted to watch for the couple of days we were there. So the kids were keen to open the presents that were waiting for them under Grandma and Grandad's tree, as were we. This time it was my family's traditional process, we take the presents one by one from under the tree and hand them to the right person. It's a slower and more enjoyable opening, we get to see what everyone got at least. But of course if you did that with 18 people it would take all day!

The kids got to watch the new Christmas programs from the BBC this year, The Snowman and the snowdog and Room on the Broom, both were good, but Room on the Broom tipped it for me.

We played Laila's new games with her, and Max (who would not take off his new Spiderman costume) was happy playing with his new fireman themed toys!

So we had my family's traditional Christmas meal on Boxing Day this year, and my parents kindly invited our friends Christine and Mark to come too. Being American and French respectively, they were delighted to disover new foods and traditions that come with an English/Jamaican influenced Christmas meal! We had roast duck, rice and peas, ackee and saltfish, stamp and go, plantain, yam, sausage meatballs, roast sweet potato, parsnips and gravy! A feast! Followed by mums homemade Christmas pudding (the one I bought in the UK was for Francois' parents who love it!) and rum butter. Which Mark, being a rum fan particularly enjoyed! I think he'll be making rum butter to go with everything from now on!

And now we're back home, François only goes back to work on 2nd January, it's the longest holiday he's had so far at home with time to relax. His last holiday consisted of painting and moving house!

There were presents to open here as well, the kids did really well out of it all. They were delighted with it all. But Laila is very conscious of what she did NOT get, (Cuisto Dingo being one of them) and that's not so nice really (although she's managed to add stuff to this list that wasn't even asked for in the first place!). So of course we remind her how lucky she is, and even more so that her birthday is in one month so she can write a new list of things she would like then.

Arggh - Laila's birthday is in one month. There's so much to organise!!!!!!!!! Only kidding, I so can't be bothered to organise anything, so small and intimate it will be!