- writing to Santa
- painting owl decorations for the tree
and
- making pom-pom robins for the tree
Speaking of the tree, decorating that was quite an adventure for some!
Every December the high school that the older two boys attend hires Edinburgh's Usher Hall for their Christmas concert and it's always a wonderful evening of music.
This was the 4th year that James (15) has taken part, playing trombone in the school wind band. This year Calum (13) took part for the first time, having joined the wind band as a trumpet player.
They don't scrub up too badly do they?
As well as all the usual Christmas events, we had a family celebration to fit in the week before Christmas. My mum celebrated her 60th birthday and my sister in law and I worked together to put on a special family dinner for her.
One of my contributions was to make the cake.
Here is my mum with all of her grandchildren.
As for the actual day of Christmas, we spent it much the same way as we always do, with my husband's parents and sister joining us.
Dinner was, of course, a big turkey with all the traditional trimmings.
There had to be a selfie taken at some point during the day.
And my Christmas Pudding flamed very nicely indeed!
We even managed to get an updated photo of all of us together, thanks to my husband's sister.
The days following Christmas and leading up to Hogmanay were suitably lazy and largely spent indoors as the weather was so awful.
We did venture out to the cinema one day though. The older boys went to see Star Wars with a cousin while I took the younger boys to see the Peanuts movie, which was a lovely little movie.
Then it was on to Hogmanay, which we spent through at my in-laws'.
All of the boys, except for Fraser (2), stayed awake to see the New Year in at the Bells.
