Snow, Glitter and Dentists - our story of Christmas so far.

This is the view outside our house - or at least it was yesterday morning. Not much has changed since then except it's got colder. I am completely pathetic about it and just won't go out in it. End of. No exceptions. I fell on ice and couldn't walk for 5 months in the early 90s and that's left me with an almost phobic hatred of the stuff. The snow itself is very very pretty and nice to look out on. I'm just very very glad we don't have to travel anywhere and am very grateful to my husband and daughter who have done sterling work trudging back and fore to the shops to ensure we have supplies for our Christmas Dinner. I don't remember as bad snow as this since the Winter of 1990. I remember that being quite close to Christmas as well. We lived in Nottinghamshire then and lost the power and water for about 3 days. Thankfully at that time we had a coal fire and the local Chinese takeaway soldiered on and provided the entire village with sustenance.

One of the vital supplies I was missing this morning was glitter, for the special homemade reindeer food. I mentioned this on Facebook and was met with a storm of protest from various people that this could be dangerous for them. Well, all I can say to the Elf and Safety mob is that, as any fule no, Santa's reindeer aren't just ordinary run of the mill specimen. They are, as Anna pointed out, magic, flying reindeer and they have diffeent needs. We've been giving them our classic recipe of one part crushed weetabix, one part oats and one part glitter for many years and we haven't lost one yet. It's at times like this I really miss Costigan. He'd have put paid to the tabloid style scaremongering!

I have never seen Anna so excited about Christmas. She just loves the snow and spends every spare moment out sledging. Our lovely friends Anne and Stevie have taken her to the local park with their children every single day. Bob went too yesterday and was very grateful from the sustenance he got from Stevie's hip flask. Perhaps this helped to protect him from the pain when a whopping great bit of his incisor came out. The poor man has had to go to the dentist this afternoon to get a filling. He has a habit of Christmas dental emergencies - when we were in Mallorca 3 years ago he lost a filling. Thankfully, that one didn't involve any pain or urgent treatment.

So, we're finally ready for what we hope will be a quiet, chilled out Christmas. The house is an absolute tip, because I haven't found the energy to give it the scrubbing it needs, but I don't care that much. Frankly, when I do have energy, I prefer to use it in more interesting ways than cleaning. I probably take the ethos that people and fun are more important than housework too far, but there are worse things, I guess.

My wish for you, dear reader, is that you have a peaceful and relaxing festive period and that 2010 is a happy, healthy year for you.

By the way, if you are looking for a wee bit of Christmas Eve fun, you can track Santa on his travels. I live blogged this last Christmas Eve which was probably strictly speaking unnecessary, but it brings back happy memories.