Over the years we have developed traditions. 1st of December we put up the Christmas tree.This year on the 1st of December Tabby had tickets for the school River Cruise; no time for tree. So Friday; nope I slept from 1:30 to 5:00, Gavin from 2:00 to 6:00, Cat & Alex until 7:00. Yah stress sleeping! Saturday Drama (last rehearsal) then Tasha went to the boyfriend’s birthday party. Laser Tag combat outside military style , only girl in her group (or invited to his party), skinned knees, covered in dirt, over the moon happy! She wants to go again, she wants to go to an Army surplus store & buy the cap. She is a nut!
Mistake 2 is with all the decorations we have accumulated, after Gavin puts up the tree & lights, it takes about 2 hours of squabbling for all the decorations to go up. You see we let the kids decorate the tree, I know stupid!
Mistake 3; in my wisdom I decided that instead of writing a Christmas letter to the family, I would send a Christmas photo. So we had to wait until after we put up the tree to get the photo.
So with Cat going to Anime club and Sunday being hair washing day, I hate …. I don’t know what but I hate something!
Aborted mistake; I had been planning to include the cats; 4 kids 4 cats, perfect right. But Gavin vetoed it, just because both girl cats don’t like being picked up or photographed. A couple of scratched children wouldn’t matter would it?
Orion on the other hand loves being photographed. Although not as much as our diva Charlie.
Giant mistake number 4. I let the kids pick the presents & cards for people in their lives (teachers, support workers, etc.). I accumulate presents over the year and get examples of things that there is plenty of stock of and they make up gifts for various people, if there is nothing perfect they go shopping, of course. Because school gets out on the 9th we also had to do that today. Did I mention 3 of the kids have a severe problem with making decisions, Yah autism!
Did I mention my headache!
Mistake no 1. has been adapted into our nightly routine. Did I mention the Gavin reads the 2 twelve days books as an evangelical minister (interspersed with some other characters) reading first then leading us all in song; Charlie acts out all the actions, Smokey occasionally does too. This is not cruel! I don’t know if it is the attention or the reward treats afterwards put provided I’m gentle Charlie actually comes to play his part. Then we sing the original carol & Gavin tries to catch us out to see if we’ve forgotten the words. We also sometimes get a “Cat Carol”. Each child removes the puzzle piece revealing a character from their advent calendar. The kids take turns pulling out the Advent drawer each containing 4 identical treats, and a different set of turns selecting the book of the Mice of Christmas revealing the scene, then that child reads the book showing each picture to the rest of the family & then hangs the little book on the tree. Because we don’t have enough ornaments. Dogs & cats join in by eating treats, they have better manners than the kids & squabble less.
Why do I do this? I’ve forgotten, did I mention I have a headache?
autistsix 
Got to have traditions, it’s part of Christmas after all. God forbid Father Christmas should forget something in my daughter’s Christmas stocking that she always gets, even if it was something she doesn’t like, and I know you understand that lol.
One thing I could never get used to when I was a boy in the tropics, hot sunny Christmas’s ugh. Could never get used to them. Even though I love hot sunny weather and don’t like the cold, Christmas just doesn’t seem right if it isn’t in the middle of winter.
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I know exactly what you mean there are presents that Santa always leaves they are never used but would be missed. Santa still visits our 23 year old, I have no idea what his cut off point is.
You can imagine how much worse the weather is for me; I hate the heat & love the cold and I have to have Christmas in a sweltering 42*.
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Your post is full of family, love and tradition- I loved it! How’s the headache?
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Unfortunately it was dehydration not stress so it’s a bit worse. Then again if it didn’t ache how would I find it? Thank you! 🙂
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Reblogged this on HarsH ReaLiTy and commented:
Hopefully the headache has gone! The photos look great and even the pets look happy! -OM
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I can not tell you how honoured I am. I love your blog so much that when I told my husband he recognised who I was talking about. Thank you! 🙂
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Reblogged this on Creative Writing Reblogged.
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Thank you!
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