Christmas Time – Mistletoe & Wine (& Vodka, Baileys, Chocolate & More Wine)

I’m a big fan of Christmas time generally. I enjoy the concept of buying gifts for my nearest and dearest (even if the reality can be a bit stressful), love Christmas decorations, am partial to a few Christmas songs and love Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.

This time around our little one is 2 1/2 so understands a lot more about what’s going on than he did last year and seems genuinely excited about Father Christmas, pretty lights, advent calendar chocolates and presents.

This year brought our first trip to see Santa in his grotto, complete with reindeer, courtesy of our local gardening centre. We initially tried to go early in December, but Santa had buggered off somewhere and both reindeer had the shits so aside from some animated penguins and seals it didn’t exactly deliver!

However we persevered, booked online and went a few days ago. Unfortunately the reindeer still had the squits so were hidden away, but Father Christmas appeared well enough to receive guests so we parked up and sought out the grotto.

All the way round the garden centre, Joshua was extremely keen to find Father Christmas.

‘Daddy I NEEEEEEEEED to see Father Christmas’

‘Move out the way daddy, coming through’

‘I not want to do colouring – I want to see Father Christmas!’

As we entered the waiting area / magical Christmas wonderland the excitement grew even stronger. We all sat in a sleigh and had our photos taken amidst a backdrop of snowy trees and animatronic, non projectile-pooing reindeer, but all Joshua wanted was to see the big man.

Our time came and we were ushered through the curtain to see Father Christmas himself. Every child’s dream. What would Joshua’s excited first words be?

‘Daddy, I not want to see Father Christmas’

Balls.

American not-very-beardy Santa tried to engage Joshua in conversation but to no avail. He tried to get a high five out of him but with no joy. Amidst much grabbing of trouser legs, Joshua did pluck up the courage to take his present out of Santa’s sack, although tried to climb in the sack to hide away straight afterwards.

And that was that – we exited through the curtain back into the cold and felt a bit bad for US Santa as I’m sure he gets hundreds of equally overawed children every week trying their best to get away from him.

Magical.

Joshua raved on afterwards about how much he enjoyed it though, so that’s the important part! Hopefully your little ones had an equally ‘enchanting’ first grotto experience 😂😂

Aside from Father Christmas and presents, what other magical moments will the day after my birthday (I’m a Christmas Eve baby) bring this year I wonder?

1. I’ve a feeling there will be excessive alcohol and food consumption involved.

2. Even more likely is that our living room will look even more cluttered than it does now given the plethora of plastic crap currently residing in our bedroom wardrobe waiting to spring out at unsuspecting guests.

3. There may well be a tantrum or two due to excessive excitement and general over tiredness.

4. At least one of these will be from Joshua.

5. There will be some crap on TV and everyone will remark on how good festive TV was in the olden days. There’ll be some mention of the Queen’s Speech, but we won’t actually watch it.

6. The weather will likely be damp and murky, prompting everyone to remark on how unfestive it all is compared to the olden days.

7. In all probability everyone will remark on how incredibly full they are after Christmas dinner and how they couldn’t eat another thing ever again.

8. They will then ram a room full of buffet food down their throats a couple of hours later along with some orange flavoured chocolate products.

9. Someone will fall asleep on the sofa. Actually virtually everyone will fall asleep on the sofa.

10. There will be more food waste / wrapping paper / cardboard / cracker remains than most small countries produce in a week.

But it’ll be fun and full of family stuff and hopefully Joshua will love it!

Part of this post was originally published on A Life Just Ordinary. For more from the blog have a look at the recent posts at the bottom of this page.

You can also follow James on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook! What an amazing Christmas treat that would be for you…

Christmas Wishes!

I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading the posts on our website over the last month and will join us again on the 27th for the next installment of comedy joy! We’ve loved having you here and appreciate you popping by.

Most importantly, a massive festive thanks to all of our wonderful contributors who have made this site what it is so far – 25 of you have sent your posts in to date and we’re only a month in!

So for now from James and Fran, have a wonderful Christmas with your families, try not to take it all too seriously and have an awesome time! Merry Christmas 🎄🎅🎁🎉

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