Belated Christmas post

My new baby and oh she is so beautiful...

I'm so excited to be back!

Now I know you are all 'so over' Christmas right now

 and probably your new years resolutions too but I just 

have to share our Christmas with you. It feels wrong not too...

Christmas has always been magical to me and I honestly can't decide whether I like Christmas Eve more than Christmas day. The anticipation of the day before is just so delicious and exciting. Although Christmas day wins points for actually getting your presents and having permission to eat more than is humanly possible. Which I did and then some. Even so, on Christmas Eve I still catch myself scanning the skies for a fast riding magical sleigh...
    So on Christmas Eve this year we put the Christmas tunes on repeat and drank lots of hot chocolate...

We hung up the cards and paper chains...

We baked cookies for Santa in the afternoon. Although Santa actually only receives two of these cookies and we eat the rest. Because of this I decided to pull out all the stops and use my really fancy cookie recipe.

They are practically brownies and softer in the middle than you can imagine...

Sorry just drooled a little on the keyboard...

Gathered my ingredients...

Obviously I needed a pirate helper who did some quick hard labour and then went straight to the good stuff on the sofa. *Sigh* no help at all.

Meanwhile I made works of art in my food...

 I'm not gonna lie, a lot of taste testing went on from my end too...

yum.

Later in the afternoon we went to the carol service

 And afterwards I made everyone wait in the car while I took pictures of the village lights in the rain...

Then back to ours to finish off all the last minute preparations for Santa's arrival...

A thank you note and best friend request. 
I wrote exactly what I was told to write...

A little snack for Santa and Reindeer...

 And a sprinkle of magic on the ground outside so the reindeer know where to land...

Then off too bed.

 Someone having a cuddle because he is 'just so excited.'

I bet you are not surprised to hear that it took them a long time to get to sleep. Isaac said 'Santa only comes to your house when you are asleep but every time I close my eyes they pop back open!'  I hear that this is a common affliction suffered by children on this particular night. Eventually they did fall asleep though. At which point I made my first ever eggnog. Rather nice...

 All that was left to do was wait for sleigh bells...

Peace on earth...

This peace was soon disturbed very early the next morning...

We just go for it, no formalities here...

There was so much good stuff, but I stopped taking photos once I started eating my own body weight in food.Totally worth it.

I really hope your Christmas was magical too.