On the blessed day of Christmas...

So Christmas Eve, after our traditional viewing of Muppet Christmas Carol, we set the munchkin up in her room with The Aristocats and set to work preparing for Christmas Day which mostly involved pulling together the Cinnamon Rolls, cleaning the house and readying the presents for the morning!

Marie Cat & Baby cat were treated to the first seats at the table and little chairs awaiting a Christmas breakfast to be cooked on the  Cupcake Kitchen.

Bridget had opened her pots and pans and peelable, choppable plastic food at the Hoag Christmas Celebration on Saturday, so we set them out ready for her to get stuck in Christmas morning.

Jared assembled the kitchen and Crazy Coupe, which he gave me a quote for one and a half hours labour time with employee/family discount which was 20% off. Knowing (as I do) Jared's labour rate, I can reliably tell you that the assembly of the car was more expensive than the car itself!!! 

It was after midnight when I finally managed to call it a night, between the cleaning, preparing breakfast items, laying out dinner items and feeling generally 33 weeks pregnant, at 12:05am I crawled into the shower, knowing that there was no way I would feel like it at 6:30am before Kathryn's call!

So, I remarked to Jared (who was Candy Crushing at level 105) that I really did feel pretty crappy, but I knew that I'd done too much the past few days, a good night of rest and the fun would be upon us!
Well, at 3:30am, the fun really was upon me, I woke up feeling really nasty, sick and tired! Long and gross story short and slightly less gross, I caught the stomach bug which my niece had on Saturday, so the puking, with the Braxton Hicks, the horrid cough and painful chest, plus exhaustion from being on the go for more than a week non-stop.... life wasn't exactly looking too rosy to me! All that said, Kathryn called at 6:30am and that was rather wonderful!!!
I managed to grab my robe and laptop and chatter away for a while before we decided to wake up Bridget and let her see Auntie Katty before she would have to leave us for her Breakfast appointment. Bridget was pretty happy to see everyone (thank goodness... because you never can tell with Bees).

So we chattered for a half hour or so until Jared woke up and we went through to the living room to open presents!

Bridget was so excited to see her little kitchen!

Jared finally emerged through and Bridget was very pleased to show her Daddy her toys!

My favourite Skype moment of the day - Bridget realises who is talking to her and you can hear her word for Gramsie & Grandma "Gamma":

 Yup! So there we all are... some aproned some not so aproned! haha.

Bridget was delighted to see everyone and was very eager to demonstrate her vegetable chopping and peeling skills at her little table and chairs.

 An unusually cooperative group photo, Bridget was trying to squeeze the life out of Jared... I was trying to look less sick and more enthusiastic!

 So, yes. Adorable little girl, giving lovely Christmas cuddles, it has to rank in my top 10 moments of all time! Particularly as we had everyone together enjoying laughs and stories and asking interesting questions!

I think it was hard for everyone to hear each other - our attempts to mute our mics when we weren't talking was pretty tricky (well for me) I kept launching into a discussion only to realise that I was talking to myself!!! That said, there was plenty of hilarity and it was wonderful that we all managed to see each other!

Smiles all around... and the family resemblance was truly uncanny!

Bridget enjoyed eating her vegetables and making soup in her pot for everyone, even Baby Cat joined in!

All this meant that a great deal of time had passed... and it was unfortunately time to say goodbye to Auntie Katty who had a breakfast appointment to get to (20 minutes earlier). Saying goodbye is always my least favourite part of these experiences, it's so difficult to say enough, but not too much to acknowledge the exquisite suffering that is being separated from those you love. I say exquisite because, it's a supreme blessing to be able to love as we do, to desire to be close as we do and to have the opportunity (even through technology and all it's glitches) to feel the very real and painful pangs of separation.

As Kermit so wisely observed: "Life is made up of meetings and partings, that is the way of it"

 On the other side of the couch Bridget was meeting her present from Gramsie - her Crazy Coupe! She literally gave out a squeal of delight and climbed right in behind the wheel!

Happiness is a monkey behind the wheel of her first car with a one daddy engine!

Bridget played in her Coupe for a good 30 - 45 minutes quite delighted with herself!

Unfortunately, though the car had sufficient fuel, the driver was required to make frequent tissue maintenance stops.

That aside, a good time was had by all!

Jared opened his presents and perused the food options... though unfortunately due to sickness, his Christmas lunch consisted of little smokies sausages, broccoli and rice! Not exactly festive.

 Jared received this book as a Christmas gift from a colleague at work - he chuckled away to himself reading the baby care sections! I thought it safest to stay out of it and get the breakfast on.

Fortunately I had prep'd everything required for our Cinnamon Rolls last night and only had to punch down the dough, roll out and roll up our rolls (haha).

I decided to serve them sans the fire this year, being that we've had a fair few disasters the last couple of days, it seemed appropriate to dispense with the arson aspects of our family breakfast tradition!

 Besides which, Bridget was very generous in dispatching some of her cupcakes to us- you know, after she licked them!

 Bridget got to speak with Grandma "Gamma" again and opened her present from me... yup! It was an apron, with matching chef hat and oven gloves, I had thought she wouldn't be too interested but boy-oh-boy was I wrong!

 It put me in mind of a truly giant Lobster... not entirely sure why, but it was a very adorable lobster, so I didn't ask too many questions!

And all this meant... yup a baby asleep by 6pm!