Christmas Day in London

We had a wonderful Christmas day.  It was very peaceful and relaxing with lots of new toys for the kids who spent the whole day playing inside and didn’t want to leave the house; given it was raining all day, this was fine!

I think that Santa must of felt very sorry for the kids being away from all their toys and friends so perhaps got a little carried away.  We came with only five suitcases, but it looks unlikely we will leave with only five now!

Jasper with his Sporticus dress up (from Lazy Town, a US show here in the UK – not sure if it’s in Australia, probably is!).

Ella with her safari set. The kids both got un-environmentally sound playsets; the safari set involves catching wild-life, putting them into cages and dragging them away, while Jasper’s Mega-Rig shark set features a vicious shark the size of a small ocean liner with multiple boats, divers and harpoons etc. to catch it with.I cringe on occasion if I think about it too much, but the kids have enjoyed both of them immensely and it’s not all one way. For every elephant that gets netted, another goes on a rampage trampling the catchers and vehicles with abandon, while the shark features movable jaws and the ability to remove the things it’s eaten through it’s stomach. Even with the big boat and harpoons, the diver spends an awful lot of time being eaten by the shark.Something different this year is that with the various money we were given for the kids, rather than buy presents for them, we’ve let them spend it themselves — this has been a lot of fun and some of the favourite toys so far are ones that (unsurprisingly) they’ve picked for themselves.Two days after Christmas we’ve also had a couple of breakages — one miniature helicopter lost it’s tail rotor when it got tromped on, while a fan from Paris snapped from over use, but everyone is still happy and three days on, playing with many of their toys. Super glue comes in handy though and I think we’ve rescued them both.