Ho, ho, ho!

How late am I with Christmas!?!?

It seemed to go on forever this year with the start being on Christmas Eve with Alexander's traditional reading of "The Night Before Christmas" to everyone..

Then comes the milk and cookies (or in this case this year, bourbon biscuits) and a carrot or two for the old reindeers..

 Christmas morning Alexander was thrilled with his Lego mine..

Nicholas with his pro stunt scooter and Cassandra was happy with her "shiny pink car" apart from the fact she thought she would get everything on her Santa list - not!

Lee was rather excited about his Transformer - he's been into them for as long as I've been with him and he only told me a few months ago that he'd never owned an Optimus Prime before (for those not in the know, he's the biggest, awesoemist Autobot there is), so I just had to do the honours for him...

  After we had all opened our pressies, Mum arrived and we started all over again!

 Think Mum was impressed with her "purpley" sweet!

Although obviously not as much as Lee was with Cassandra's pink sparkly shower cap!

 Dinner and games, although Lee wasn't feeling too good and went to bed fairly early on Christmas Day, so after Cassie was in bed too, Mum, the boys, Tony & Christine and I all played cards for ages!  Teaching my kids to gamble at a young age, what a terrible mother!

 Boxing day we did it all over again chez Butler style...

 John's fav gift was of course Bruce - his climbing garden knome!

 

And then on 28th, we all went down to see Lisa and Greg and the twins for more gifts and festivities!

And then the dec's came down!!!!!

Dancing Queen!

 Cassandra has been attending Expressions at Tiffiny's Dance School for the past year or so and this weekend was "watch week", where all us parents got to go in and see what they do in a lesson

of Tap and Modern...

  

So there was Lee and I and the boys too, clapping away for her :)

Cassandra also has two other friends that are in her year at school that attend the same class namely Evelyn and Emily x

Such cuties!

Official mug shots...

The kids school photos finally came through...

 Alexander x

 Nicholas x

 Cassandra x

And a very rare picture of all three of them :)

LOVE my kids xx

Gabriel's Big Day

So very very proud of our little lady in today's school Christmas production...

A truly BEAUTIFUL angel if ever I saw one!

Jingle bells, jingle bells....

I love taking the kids to see Father Christma and try to do something different each year too - this year we all went off to Marsh Farm to take part in their special Christmas day.

Lee and Nicholas had a football match that much to my frustration didn't kick off until 12.30pm so Mum and I took Alexander and Cassandra over early and Lee followed after the match.  I do like elves... Boris was his name!

Part of the package was to "build a bear" Cassandra chose a dog and Alex a proper bear and they were lovely.

A visit to the Elf factory saw the two of them painting Christmas decorations..

Jimbo, the guy that owns Partyman World of Play, has recently bought Marsh Farm and his pouring money in and upgrading the site, the new go-karts went down very well!

 We were at the farm, so had to feed the animals!

 A trip to Mother Christmas' kitchen was also on the agenda to decorate some gingerbread men..

 When Nicholas and Lee arrived, we had to go round again!

Nicholas was actually the only one who ate his little man!

 It was a tad cold (to say the least) and Lee had forgotten his hat - so "tried" to nick Mum's scarf!!

 Waiting with the conductor for the Santa Express..

 Such lovely elves...

 Meeting the big man himself - Cassandra would like a pink shiny car please..

 Nicholas would like a large Minion please...

Alexander would like some lego and a digital watch please.

A WONDERFUL day :)

So So proud of the boys..

Sunday week ago saw all the family over at Barleylands in Billericay for a very important Awards ceremony for Scouts.

  All in uniform!!

Nicholas achieved his Chief Scout BRONZE award!!

Alexander achieved his SILVER Chief Scout Award!!

 Awarded to them by the County Commissioner..

And of course, they got chosen to be "quoted" for the local press!!

So so proud of my boys xx