Pedal Bike!

I've got a LOT of blips to catch up with but I have to post this one. The joy on that face says it all really!! Bean has been asking about getting a pedal bike for months, and when we got back from Worthing over a month ago and mum and dad had just left for their Aussie adventure they'd left a note saying "USE THE TESCO VOUCHERS - CAN BE USED AS PAYMENT TOWARDS BIKES TOO!!" so we had a look and by some miracle found the absolute perfect bike. The right size, the right colour (blue, with orange and yellow lightning decals), and AFTER adding in delivery there was still 50p left on the vouchers. Wins the title of this year's Present of Awesomeness.

This morning when Bean woke up the first thing he said was "Has Santa been? Can I go and see if Santa's been?!" We'd done a lot of talking about Santa, and Christmas, and Jesus, and Saint Nicolas, and talked about everything we knew about them. We believe in Jesus, that he is the whole reason for Christmas, that all of us were on "the naughty list" and God still gave us the best Christmas present ever in Jesus. So Christmas happens no matter whether we've been "good" or "bad", and we don't do the "naughty list", or bribery to make our kids conform so that they might or might not have presents at Christmas. We talked about where the legend of Santa comes from, Saint Nicholas, and how he decided to show people the love of Jesus by giving anonymous gifts on Christmas night to (specifically) children. He's an inspiration. We talked about how Santa / Father Christmas is a story these days, but he is the Spirit of Christmas and then we talked about how Bean is free to choose what he wants to believe - we don't want to lie to him, but now he knows what we know, he can choose what to believe. His mind was blown a bit about the idea of the gift of Jesus being given to all of us on the naughty list, but he said he is happy to believe in Santa which made me smile. I love that he still wants to believe in the magic of Christmas, as well as understanding about Jesus. I still believe in the magic of Christmas! So we put socks out for Santa last night, and the boys went to bed in excited eager anticipation.


"SANTA'S BEEN!!!! MUMMY LOOK SANTA'S BEEN!!" He couldn't wait to wake Bear up to open their socks up and see what was in them :) Once everything had been investigated he asked to go and see if the cats had been fed (they're not allowed downstairs until the cats have been fed in peace!) and came back hopping with excitement because there were presents under the tree :)

Bear has had a rubbish day though. He woke up sick, and continued being sick most of the day. Didn't want chocolate, only milk, juice, or water. He tried to eat mince pies (has discovered a taste for them) but they came back up too. Poor kid. Wasn't interested in most of the presents but managed to open them all eventually....

So today hasn't gone to plan, really. We decided to postpone Christmas Lunch to Christmas Dinner rather than stress after church, and had stir fried sprouts with bacon and garlic (they were GORGEOUS) instead. Then dinner time came around and by then half the household was ill and we made the decision to postpone Dinner to Saturday in the hope that more of us would feel better by then. So we had cheese and crackers and port instead!

What a funny old day.

Muppets Christmas Carol was good though. And the Snowman and the Snowdog!