Christmas day

We had a really nice Christmas this year. It was lovely being in our new house and actually having the room to put things like the tree and the Christmas food.

And what a lot of food we had. I'd been buying bits and bobs every week and putting it on top of one of the cupboards in the kitchen so I already had quite a few things. Then one night last week the doorbell rang and on the way to answer it I heard people running and then a car speeding away up the road. I opened the door and there was a rather large hamper full of Christmas food with a note saying it was a gift from all our friends at church. I only just managed to drag it inside as it was rather heavy.

The next day I told Laura about it and she said she had planned to make up a hamper for me too. It's a good job she didn't as we already had enough to feed a small army. In the end she decided to buy me a turkey which she delivered on Christmas eve.

My father also came round on Christmas eve to invite us for Christmas dinner at their house so I'm cooking my turkey today instead.

Levi was so excited I'm amazed he slept at all.

We got up at 6.50 to open our presents.

I bought him a few clothing essentials, some Christmas DVDs and

some treats!

Hmm, what could this be?

It's a combination of Levi's two favourite things. A Liverpool FC bus.

Now for the big one. When Levi was seven we used to get the train to school every morning. At that time Virgin trains used to run from Bournemouth station and every time he saw the Virgin train he'd get really excited. He'd look through the windows and study every detail of it.

Then he discovered Hornby trains and whenever we went into a shop that stocked them he'd stand and study the Virgin train set.

Last year after Christmas and his birthday he ended up with more than £180 and I asked him if he wanted to buy a Virgin train set with it. I bought him a Hornby catalogue to look at but when it came down to it he couldn't bear to part with all his money in one hit. Instead he frittered it away on little bits and pieces. He still had fun buying things but when the money was spent he didn't really have a lot to show for it.

A couple of months ago we went to Hobbycraft and he spent hours studying the Virgin train set again. He said he regretted wasting his money and wished he'd listened to me and bought the train set.

Little did he know that I had been saving up to buy it for him. They cost £200 so it was going to be a joint birthday and Christmas present.

In the end I didn't pay £200 for it as I managed to get one from Amazon for a lot less.

He saw the box when it was delivered and guessed that I'd bought him a train set but I told him it wasn't as there was no way I could afford £200. A few days later my dad delivered a big sheet of MDF which I'd asked him to get for the base board and Levi said 'I knew it, that's a Virgin train set'. I told him it was a train set but not a Virgin one as I couldn't afford £200. I told him how much it cost and he then spent hours trawling through the Hornby website trying to work out which one I'd bought him.

He was blown away when he unwrapped it. He kept saying 'how did you afford it' and 'I can't believe I've got it'.

It was worth every penny just to see the look on his face.

Ten minutes later he's still ranting about it.

You can just see from the look on his face how much he's wanted one of these. He spent ages looking over every detail of the train.

I got these gorgeous slippers from my brother. I'm going to put them away until I've got carpets down as the tiles downstairs make brown marks on anything that touches them and I don't want them to get dirty.

Levi gave me this lovely picture of himself which he made at church.

I always appreciate anything Levi has made as he doesn't make things very often. He's a bit OCD and is convinced he'll make a mistake so he doesn't do art or craft unless I make him do it.

The finished sweets

The festive fudge turned out ok.

So did the Turkish delight but unfortunately I got sidetracked helping Levi to wrap his presents and the toffee got a lot hotter than it should have. It didn't burn but the texture wasn't right so I didn't give it out as gifts.

These are the lovely gift bags I put them in.

Oops!

This is the bus stop where we normally wait to get the bus into town. Apparently the ice on the roads was so bad that yellow buses suspended all services this morning.

Hopefully it will be alright tomorrow as I need to pop to the supermarket to get a few last minute food bits.

Making sweets

We've been really busy today making sweets to give as gifts for Christmas. First Levi made some festive fudge and then I had a go at Turkish delight. Tomorrow I'm going to make some toffee as well. I bought some nice little festive gift bags from Lakeland to pack them in so they should be quite nice when they're finished.

What shall we give?

Levi's service project

This afternoon Levi is going carol singing at a local nursing home with the rest of the primary children. This is part of a service project they've been doing for their faith in God award. As well as the carol singing the children have made these cushions to give to the old ladies. Levi really enjoyed sewing it and unlike the girls he got on and did it by himself, unfortunately he managed to sew the back to the front when he was sewing the beads on so we had to unpick it and start again.

The Nativity

This afternoon the primary children performed the annual nativity play at church. This is only the second nativity that Levi has been in as when he was at school they only seemed to do the politically correct non religious stories. Last year Levi was a wise man but this year he got to be Joseph.

As he's at that sensitive age where he dies at the mere mention of the word 'girls' I took the opportunity to tease him a bit about being married to Mary and jokingly asked him if there was going to be a kissing scene this year. He was very embarrassed bless him. I thought I was bad but then last week a couple from church offered us a lift to the Christmas party and on the way there they asked Levi if he had any lines to say in the play. Before he could reply the husband said 'it's easy being Joseph, all you have to do is shout push'. Levi was mortified, it was very funny.

This was his first scene where the angel talks to him while he's asleep to tell him that Mary is going to give birth to Jesus.

Here he is travelling to Bethlehem with Mary.

Here they are asking the inn keeper if there's any room which there isn't.

They try again at another inn and this time the inn keeper (who looks suspiciously like the first inn keeper) says they can stay in his stable.

That night Mary gives birth to baby Jesus. Levi does not tell her to push.

The shepherds and angels come to worship the newborn king.

The wise men bring their gifts. While they are doing this the little girl who looks like she's talking to Mary walks onto the stage and shouts hello mummy and daddy. The rest of the nursery children then come out and sing twinkle twinkle little star.

Then for the finale. The little girl who shouted hello to her parents decides she wants to use the microphone so she starts pulling it down to her height, another little girl thinks this looks like fun so goes over to join her but the first little girl decides she doesn't want to share so starts trying to push the second little girl off the stage. A shepherd then has to step in to stop it turning into a brawl.

Christmas

Last year I bought the children chocolate advent calendars. When I was a child I really enjoyed opening my advent calendar and discovering what was behind that little door every day. I was expecting my children to get as much pleasure out of their advent calendars as I got out of mine, but they didn't. Instead every morning they'd wake up, walk into the lounge still half asleep, open their calendars and shove the chocolate straight down the hatch without even looking at it.

So this year I decided to buy traditional advent calendars hoping they'd get the same pleasure I did as a child.

Anyway the 1st of December arrived and at 6.30 in the morning I went skipping up the stairs to remind Theo to open his before he went to college. After lots of encouragement and me using my 'I'm really excited it will soon be Christmas voice', he eventually opened the first window to reveal.............a trumpet!

To say he was slightly underwhelmed by the experience would probably be the understatement of the century.

Levi moaned a bit, then showed a bit of enthusiasm, then didn't want to open it so I opened it, then the next day he hit the roof because I'd opened it and now I'm not sure how he feels about it.

People on the HE special list have been talking about Lego advent calendars so I think I'll try one of those next year.

Yesterday I spent hours putting up my new Christmas tree. It's quite big and you have to fit all the branches individually so it took most of the day. When it was finally up I didn't have the energy to decorate it so I left it until today. I wanted to see if my fairy would fit as I only had about 6 inches between the top of the tree and the ceiling. I had to fold the top branch in half to get her on but she did fit.

Then disaster!

I forgot she was up there and decided to move the tree a teensy bit further back and she fell off and look what happened! I did try to super glue her back together but for some bizarre reason super glue works on everything except broken fairies.

The finished tree.

I found these for Levi. You might not be able to see from the picture, it's a stocking and Santa hat with the Liverpool FC crest on it. They weren't cheap but he's pleased as punch with them. I was trying to get some Liverpool baubles for the tree but they were out of stock everywhere.

He's quite excited because he's off to see his beloved Liverpool again next week with Uncle Matthew. Lets hope Torres is playing or I'll have to put up with another week of him ranting about it.

Parliamentary petition

On the 8th of December more than 70 MP's took part in a mass presentation of the parliamentary petition asking the government to think again about the proposed bill implementing the recommendations of the Badman review into home education.

The previous record for petitions presented on the same day was 44 and we had over 120. It was also quite something to have so many MP's turn up at the same time. 70 doesn't sound like a lot but it's more than 10% of the members of parliament.

Many thanks to Graham Stuart for organising it.

While this was happening about 70 home educators were holding a candle lit vigil outside.

I managed to collect signatures for 4 different constituencies and met with my MP to discuss home education, the review and the petition.