Christmas is over. It was fun and exhausting. On Christmas Day we hosted 12 people for lunch, including an overseas student friend of son G, and G's fiancee, my sister and her family, and our parents.
On Boxing Day we made our annual trip to the nearby city where my parents live to celebrate Dad's birthday. We joined half the city to walk around the lake in the local park. It was very atmospheric - there was a faint mist through which we could see the lake in one direction, a sheet of silver, and in the other up the hill the park's stately home looking faintly sinister and gothic. Everything was monochrome - black, grey, silver, and trailing white mist.
After lunch further friends and family joined us and after tea we played Mornington Crescent. I 'won'.
On 27 December we went to husband R's family tea, when we commemorate his late Mum's birthday. This time the games involved pulling names out of a bag and defining them in as few words as possible so other people could guess them.
In between all of this, son G and his fiancee met friends and looked at where they might live once they're married. Meanwhile daughter S felt sad because her fiance was with his grandparents and couldn't join us for Christmas. She also felt sad because everything is changing. But we've already talked about creating new traditions in the new families that will come into being after next August. In some ways it will be a plus - the children will no longer have to endure rice pudding on Christmas Eve - a tradition I created after reading about it in a magazine article as something some European countries do. They hide almonds in the rice pudding, and anyone who gets an almond receives a prize. I thought it was a good idea because a milk pudding would be easy to digest before the richness of Christmas food, and also because it was fun to have the presents (usually little Christmas novelty chocolates from Thorntons, or, when they made them, Body Shop soap animals). But although they put up with it for the sake of the prizes, the children have always disliked the actual rice pudding and asked for the smallest portions possible. So this is a tradition they can discard.
Another tradition has been visiting the sales. We've always done this in a somewhat desultory way, so haven't queued through the night for bargains, but nevertheless we like to see what's been discounted. This time though, S also used the opportunity to go into the Oxfam shop and see if they'd had any additions to their second hand wedding dress rail. They had, and one of them was lovely, and we bought it. S was very pleased because it combined all the elements she'd hoped for in a wedding dress, whilst enabling us to make a donation to Oxfam. She'd often said she wanted to buy her wedding dress from Oxfam because she felt it was more ethical, but she'd tried on dresses in other wedding shops to see what suited her and what she liked. I had been shocked to find what poor quality material the 'new' dresses were - several had lace so harsh it actually brought S up in a rash. But the Oxfam dress is made of lovely material - it will need some alterations to help it fit, but it's gorgeous.
And today I found my first 'mother of the bride/groom' outfit, at a sale price in a small shop that specialises in special occasions.
So we are inching further towards being ready for the big days.
Meanwhile, G's fiancee has taken delivery of her bridesmaids' dresses, which are charming.
Christmas has brought us the gifts of fun, and family time, and slightly unexpectedly some important clothes.
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