Things We Do At Christmas

Some traditions are everyone's and some are just our own – like buying the tree way to early and then despising it by the time the 25th arrives. Our trees are lucky if they make it to Boxing Day. Yesterday, on Christmas night, David wagered it was too dead to even carry down the hallway stairs for all the needles it would shed, so instead he dropped it out the window onto the footpath below then carried across the road to the trash. Much to the kids' simultaneous delight and horror.

Some other things that happen most years

- I buy the kids too many presents. They sit in boxes un-opened for months. As I know this to be true this year we started a new tradition where we do a Kris-Kindle gift the night before. The single present everyone received was given so much more attention than the mound that arrived the next day. I think it's time for a new way of doing things next year.

- Actually next year, and this is where we get to our next tradition, I really hope to continue what we started last year of being somewhere warm and half way to Australia again. Singapore, perhaps.

- David is getting really good at Turkey. I was never overly impressed by it. But he really nailed it last year at our early family dinner. And again this year. Cal and I made a very good cranberry sauce. Turkey, I like you.

- Stella is the latest addition to the tradition. Our Christmas Eve was a funny, happy, boozy night and she toddled around playing with Cal and having a fabulous time. David remarked that he thought this felt like our family's first real Christmas, not just a Christmas we'd put on for one kid. I think that means we all really enjoyed ourselves.

Cal made my bottle of Champagne look like a palm tree, "coz that's what Mum likes"