Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas; I love the build up to it, being in the midst of it, and also winding it down. Like all good things, it's not over till it's over, but having pulled yet another pine needle from my foot etc, and given I had a spare half hour, I decided to quickly drag it on down while everyone was otherwise occupied upstairs. He he, it feels smugly satisfying. Craig feels the need to have at least two formal meetings, a spreadsheet and a full written forecast before embarking on any task. I could see his shock and horror when he came down to see it had been done with no planning.
Anyway, as for the day itself it was remarkably calm and peaceful (that is when the children weren't shooting at each other with nerf guns or hurling rudolph shaped splat toys around the place).
We all received many beautiful gifts. I must photograph some of the lovely home made ones to show you later.
Nana bought the children a stunt ramp for use with their scooters, bikes and skateboards. Miles, rather wisely I think, has decided to familiarize himself with it on a space hopper before venturing onto wheels!
The children also received a joint gift from Craig and I, an air hockey table. Miles in particular is very competitive and I can see lots of fun being had with this. Only trouble is that with a football table and an air hockey table in the playroom, it's becoming rather congested, and, I decided over dinner this evening that we needed to do a bit of furniture rearranging. I now have a sofa in my dining area and will have to see how that feels before I decide if it's staying - or if they will have to learn to work around it when playing table games.
Hermione decided that some of our chooks would have gifts under the tree this year and that they should come in to open them in the glow of the fairy lights too. Sheesh, sometimes I think life just gets nuttier by the day around here!
For me, one of the highlights of the day was being able to share with Nana all of the work I have being doing on her family tree. I have managed to trace one part of her family tree back to the 1500s and have discovered that my children are the thirteenth generation of a particular bloodline, to live within a twenty mile radius of those original relations. I find that fairly amazing!
I also discovered that we originate from a family of famous watchmakers and silversmiths. Their things can still be found in antique shops now and with some help from a friend I managed to find a sweet little silver brooch made in the 1800's by Nana's Great Great Great Great Uncle, to give to Nana along with a booklet I had made about her family in days gone by.
I was so excited to share it all with her after months of trawling through records and trying to piece it all together. Thankfully I think she is as delighted as I am to have discovered so much about our roots.
Well, so there you have it! It's been wonderful but now it's time to move on. I don't like to let the grass grow under my feet. Onwards and upwards - as Craig is fond of saying, nothing stands still, everything changes and if you're not changing with it you're actually going backwards.
Looking forward to easing back into a weekly rhythm with the children, friends and home. The spontaneity and celebration is great, but I love the comfort of my rhythm. Goodness, as it is only Boxing Day I shall leave it at that, perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps it's not really over till there's no more turkey or cold stuffing balls left in the fridge....
4 comments:
It's so good to hear that your mum's enthused about your family tree hunt. What a lovely thing to do. Hermione and the hens in the house...?? Haaaaaaaaa so funny!
Hmmm, I think I'm getting too soft - a quick look in the kitchen's one thing, but in the living room opening gifts with the family on Christmas morning is quite another - even if H did promise to have cleaning materials at the ready if either of them disgraced themselves by plopping on my cream rug, not that either did thankfully :-)
The family tree sounds interesting where did you start? (Its something I've thought about doing)
I'd thought about it for years and had tried a couple of times with what you can find on free sites, but never got very far. This year I met a lovely lady who does this kind of thing as a hobby. She has helped me a lot and really got me 'up and running' so to speak. She used her subscription to genealogy sites to find quite a lot and suddenly it started to feel do-able whereas in the past I'd always been disheartened.
I've just gone down one bloodline as yet, which wasn't my original intention. It soon transpired that some of our ancestors were Quakers and it can be trickier to find them because of the way in which during times gone by churches maintained many records and Quakers didn't always register everything with the churches - they had their own systems.
But, we soon discovered that going down a different 'branch' of the tree we had relations who had done all kinds of things - exhibited at Crystal Palace, appeared at the Old bailey for attempted murder etc - those kind of things made them easier to trace :-)
Now could be a good time to start looking because ancestry.co.uk has a free 14 day trial on at the moment. You have to enter your card details but it's easy to cancel online before the end of that period so that you don't get charged if you don't want to go ahead after the free bit.
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