Christmas at 'Hotel Stanbury'

'Hotel Stanbury' is a phrase used by my friend V who used to frequent our house when her daughter attended Uni in Exeter. (Oh I miss those days!)  When she stayed she would be a fabulous help at entertaining whichever little person required it, I was reminded of it because my parents have been particularly good at that too this year.

So Christmas for us was exactly as I hoped it would be over all- it was marred by Lucas being ill beginning Christmas Eve and continuing even now.  On Christmas Eve We spent about an hour in the afternoon getting the food ready for the Christmas dinner. I love to eat the big Christmas Eve as it kind of marks the start of Christmas and goes with the afternoon of cooking whilst supping mulled wine (or mulled apple juice in my case.) Nathan finally found his way home just in time for dinner after being AWOL for 6 days. We had our dinner followed by Christmas Pudding then the kids watched festive TV. I had a horrendous night of Lucas screaming and being very poorly.

Christmas day almost started at 1am when Seb woke and came in to us. He wouldn't settle in our room and DH ended up in his bed with him. Emma was also milling around at around 1 and 'couldn't sleep'. In the end everyone got back to sleep but were all still awake at around 6am and present opening commenced at 7am!We paused part way through opening to cook breakfast (bacon, egg, mushroom, pancakes - yum!) then finished opening before starting to assemble everything Seb had. Being Lego it took nearly all day! We cooked some buffet foods late afternoon and then people picked throughout the day. Lucas wouldn't touch his presents and we couldn't raise a smile at all. Everyone else seemed very happy with their toys though which was mainly books and weights for Nathan, DVDs and clothes for Abi, crafts and clothes for Emma, and Lego and DS/wii games for Seb. Lucas got lots of toys from PlayMerrily including rattles, bath toys and a beloved toy monkey. They each received £85 so were very impressed with that. Abi, Emma, Seb and Lucas saved theirs whilst Nathan added it to some saved money and bought a PS3.
Boxing Day was a first for me because I DIDN'T take the decorations down. But then I was pre -occupied with Lucas. In the morning we nipped out to get Nathan's PS3 as I said.Then we headed home for lunch. By late afternoon we could bare Lucas' upset any longer and took him to the walk-in centre to have him checked over. The Dr we were lucky enough to see was wonderful, really explained everything he was doing and what was wrong - ear infection, cold and viral cough -  and was happy to listen to all my worries and happily looked at each issue to rule them out. Not an awful lot to be done for it though. No antibiotics, just calpol, but we had an answer at least. I also bought a breast pump as my milk was quickly declining because Lucas refused to feed.
Today we DID take the decorations down because I know once DH took my parents home it would be hard to get it done with just DH and I. We also bought a(nother) car today. I know, dont say it, blame DH!!!!! A Renault Espace which we pick up on 2nd Jan. Long time readers know all about DH tendency to buy cars which drives me mad. Hope I can drive it now. Other than that Lucas needed lots of TLC still, the kids played on the Wii and we pottered around doing not a lot.
And that was Christmas :)