Christmas chez nous

It is a good job that we don't have high expectations of Christmas. It is not that we don't enjoy it, we do. But we are not religious and we decided some years ago to gradually try to drop out of the pre-Christmas consumerism.

We will have presents, of course. In the past I was always left to do the shopping so I have gradually changed things. Now most of it is done on the internet and I expect Hubby and son 1 to tell me what they want. I also buy most of the things they will give me. There is no point wasting money on things that are not wanted.

We do enjoy our traditional Christmas dinner, though to be honest the boys both like the sausage and bacon trimmings better than the turkey. I do the food shopping and cooking, while hubby does much of the clearing up. Son 1 is threatening to help me cook this year which would actually be good as he is a great chef. We are not entertaining, so I won't have any of the stress involved in trying to produce something worthy of a glossy magazine.

This year the house is not Christmassy at all. We put the fibre-optic tree up, but son 2 got upset and has made us take it down again. Shame as he used to love the changing colours. He also takes down any cards we try to display, so they are piling up on a shelf. To be honest none of us are feeling well, so I think we can live with that.

We'll just celebrate Christmas in our own unique and autism-friendly way, as we have done for the last couple of years.

Three notable things:

1. Hubby's birthday today and he has taken three days off work. I had thought perhaps we could both take son 1 out for lunch, but we couldn't because...

2. ...son 2 had a 24 hour sickness bug yesterday and is also at home. He got up at 4.30am yesterday ( as did I , of course) and vomited a few times until eventually it started coming out the other end instead. He was miserable and didn't eat until late in the day yesterday, but has been happy and seemingly healthy today, so hopefully back to school tomorrow until Friday.

3. A lovely surprise in the post today cheered me up no end. I opened a package containing a Mslexia writer's diary which must have come from a giveaway I entered ages ago on chick lit book blog Trashionista and had almost forgotten about. Thanks, Trashionista, I love it!