It's Christmas Eve :D

The kids wake up uber excited...I wake up uber excited...Steve wakes up. Christmas Eve is the bestest day in the whole entire year!

To start with its a quick brew followed by a dash to Tesco (since we've focused on making sure we have all the Christmas food and drink but forgotten to get milk and bread). On the plus side at least is the fact that even though news reports show heaving supermarkets it seems still no one has really heard of Tesco Irlam and it's empty as usual. Whilst there we pick up the newspaper for mum and see 'why Messi to Man City is not just a dream', clearly it is just a dream but it's a pretty amazing one to have which makes me smile like a lunatic and crash the trolly a few times as we shop.

Once back home it's brunch time so Steve gets to work on one of his amazing fry-ups. Kayla has a veggie one like me since she's a 'veggie' now....to everyone else she's actually someone who sometimes eats veggie food in addition to meat but she's convinced she's almost there. Proof it's not always the thought that counts.

After brunch we make Christmas Eve videos to send to uncle John since it's the first time he's staying in Sweden not at ours, luckily this means the kids won't bully him into making reindeer food (Quaker porridge oats) to be scattered outside for Rudolph which should please the neighbours.

Edward, who has been asking how long until bedtime since the moment he got up, has disappeared upstairs to do something that will surprise me - I hoped he was tidying his room! Turns out he was getting his pjs on .... It's 11.50am!

Next it's time to deliver Christmas cards around the avenue and much to Edwards delight we get to deliver on the big main road too.....as long as he puts on wellies and a coat to hide the pjs. It's freezing so it's the quickest delivery ever and there's an odd number of cards to post which almost results in full on war for the last one until I distract them with the promise of a Quality Street chocolate once we are back inside.

The afternoon is spent being super lazy. Kayla has a new book so sits with her nose in it for hours reading well over 100 pages in total. Edward does some drawing and colouring whilst we watch family films on TV and track santa courtesy of NORAD (through loyalty) and google (because it's better - even if shamelessly their cartoon santa is wearing google glasses to help him get it all done and at one point it crashes due to unexpected demand...clearly everyone wanting to track santa on the same day caught them by surprise!)

Once Dad and Grandma are back from Scotland we pop to see them to get a little fresh air so we don't sit on the couch ALL day. Mum is stressing about tomorrow which I feel kind of bad about so inwardly promise myself I'll make one less joke about her Christmas cake to make up for it.

We get the kids home using 3 bribes

1) if you stay here too long then Father Christmas might think you live here so won't come to our house.

2) remember Kolarov said he sees if you've been bad so you need to do as we say or he'll set his wolves on you (Edward is scared of Kolarov since his YouTube vid yesterday)

3) if you come now we can have picnic tea in the lounge

Slowly the combo worked and we headed home.

Tea was a buffet of leftovers from our party yesterday, though we managed to make them forget the 'in the lounge' element to bribe 3. At 5.58 Kayla and Steve went outside to watch the international space station fly over, apparently it looked like a shooting star (and it did because Me and Ed saw it on twitter later....which was just like watching it in the back garden with them only clearer and warmer).

The evenings entertainment was decorating biscuits for santa and pulling crackers which each had a wind up toy of varying speeds in it so they could race. Lastly before the kids went to bed they put out the cookies for Father Christmas and 2 really big carrots for Rudolph. I thought this would be the perfect moment to pop open my little bottle of champagne in its cute santa jacket to have a Christmas Eve toast with my lovely family....unfortunately the kids thought it was instead the perfect drink to leave out for santa and so I've sat here staring at it for the last 3 hours waiting for this moment, the moment of complete quiet when not a creature is stirring not even two very excited fighting sleep children.

Awwwww , 'pop' , bliss.