Boxing Day 26日

Having Christmas at my own house is always a bit of a bittersweet joy.
I want for Mairi's sake to have our own family traditions. They don't have to be the same as my childhood memories ("Has he been yet?"), although trying to emulate my no doubt contorted memories of Christmases past makes me feel a little less homesick at this time of year; I just want her to have a "we always did this at Christmas (or New Year or whatever)" to contribute to conversations when she is grown.

I truly believe that you have to make special occasions special. It is not intrinsic, and it's always worth the effort. I also basically love having people over, to be able to relax and enjoy good company a few wines in your own home without worrying about when and how to go home, and what Weechan is doing, is a blessing.

Of course it also means a certain amount of slaving over hot stoves and work on Christmas Day itself, and entails no doubt that part of M's "we always do BLANK at Christmas" will be Mother having a rant about getting the place cleaned up for people coming! So while there is great satisfaction once the dinner is on the table and everyone has had a nice day, I always find that I can't really be bothered to eat and enjoy the actual feast myself by the time I finally sit down to it.

So Boxing Day is always when I really enjoy the food of Christmas Dinner, and so it was this year too. As luck would have it, I ordered the same size of turkey I normally do when I have 8-10 mouths to feed, plus a quarter of a ham, even though I only had 6 adult guests, and two of them were vegetarians! So the leftovers were plentiful and of high quality, and enjoyed by the Ikegami girls for lunch next day with gusto! (It's December 28th as I finally get around to blogging, and so far we've had turkey fried rice, and a turkey and ham cream pie and there's still scope for further variations!)

Christmas has been the last project on a long "to do list", which it seems I started to check off before Halloween, so Boxing day was the first morning in a long time that I woke up with nothing next on the list that I had to plan for, and I decided that the dishes and cleaning up could wait: that this would be an Ikegami girls day. Weechan has always played well and contentedly by herself, for which I am grateful, but the guilt has been setting in lately, as I hear myself saying "I'll do it with you later when I finish this" once too often, and then later never comes.... Today I'd go with her flow and do my stuff later, I decided.

So, our day involved: making one of the great ELC make your own doll kits she got for Christmas - see Fairy Doll above. Going to the park. Watching "High School Musical 2" followed by much dancing around and singing of songs from said masterpiece. Generally slobbing around on the couch.

Best day I've had in a while. Thanks Mairi!