December 13: Pick a new decoration for the tree

This is the first year that we spent Christmas Eve with extended family. Thankfully, we could still carry on with some of our favourite Christmas traditions to keep our family traditions continued for another year.

Like every other year, the kids got a little box with new pyjamas, a cup with some hot chocolate, marshmallows, and this year I made some tiny gingerbread houses to go on the side.

We also set out our Christmas Eve box with treats for Santa, his reindeer and left the key outside for Santa to get into the house.

The kids left their stockings at the end of their bed, with great excitement about what they might be getting tomorrow morning… I also love their determination to stay awake until Santa comes. This however did get me answering a few questions last year when a child pretended to be asleep and found mum filling up the stockings.

The kids all had turns wrapping their family secret Santa presents. It was so cute to watch each one attempt this. As it is meant to be a gift from each individual person, I let them wrap their present and take pride in what they have chosen for that person.

Samantha loves wrapping presents so she would have happily done them all. Isaac disliked it so much that it took him 30 minutes to even start the process, after telling me he had no idea how to do it and wrapping presents is too hard. However, his completed job was great.

Xavier also loves wrapping presents so he was straight into it and asked if he could do more.

This year we made extra gingerbread houses and with the help of Isaac, we drove around and delivered gingerbread houses to four friends. We love sharing Christmas joy and giving something that is a little bit special and fun to our friends. I forgot to take photos of the houses, but a lovely friend who was out when we delivered the houses sent me a photo… so here is one of the houses that we gifted.