Getting ready for Christmas and Gender Reveal

Hi,

So I'm writing this post because Lissa - who NEVER writes her blog finally wrote something so now I'm getting hassled to catch up on mine!!

So - I've been getting ready for Christmas after leaving it all until the last minute!  We have a spreadsheet that we use every year - one page for all the kids and their partners - main presents and stocking stuff, and a page for everybody else like our parents, Helen & Paul, other friends and family.  Its so hard trying to make sure the kids all have quite a few presents to open - all around the same amount of presents and adding up to more or less the same cost - same with the stockings - without buying crap for the sake of it!  Now it's not just the kids but their partners too - I don't think they have any idea how difficult and stressful it is!  We also have secret santa fancy dress to sort out too - and that is stressing me out because me and Andy both ordered fancy dress costumes a while ago and they haven't turned up and they should have and they are not replying to emails or anything!!

I am supposed to be buying xmas cards for all my nieces and nephews and sending them all to my mum who is going to put £10- in each one and I will send her the money - but I don't even have any cards yet!

THEN I also need to make sure the house and all beds are clean and that is not a 5 minute job! AND all the Christmas decorations so the house looks all festive.  AND I have to sort out all the Christmas dinner stuff, crackers and things, AND we always have a spread on boxing day!!  Plus - we need to make sure we have lots of alcohol in AND breakfasts and lunches....

I also have to wrap a ton of presents which takes hours and hours...

There's also Andy and his presents and his wrapping...

And - going to the tip with the millions of cardboard boxes we end up with...

So - getting ready for Christmas is very expensive and a LOT of work!

After saying all that - we always have an AWESOME Christmas!! :-) So it all ends up worth it!

In the middle of all this Lissa has been preparing to have a scan to reveal the gender - and I am the one revealing the gender (on 18th January - something else I've been doing - trying to arrange the venue!). Antony's mum was going to the scan with them and she was going to be given an envelope with the gender written inside.  Lissa was being a major stress head about us slipping up and revealing the gender before January 18th - so I had a lengthy chat with Ginette about it (I've never met her yet - but she seems really nice).  The lengthy chat was all about making it less stressful for Lissa by telling her that we were not going to open the envelope until after Lissa has visited us both over Christmas - but really finding out much sooner than that - especially so that I could start planning the reveal.  Our plan was very clear - find out - lie to Lissa - no stress!  So on the day of the scan - Ginette then says to Lissa - I wanted to wait but your mum wants to know later today lol.  Oh well....

Then - Lissa had the scan and said to me - I have a link to all the pics which should show the gender and I could send you the link - I think my reply was SEND ME THE LINK NOW!  I came running down the stairs saying to Andy OMG OMG OMG Lissa is sending me a link to the scan pics and I should be able to see the gender!!  So I logged in and saw the amazing pics - and it said on one of the pics whether it was a boy or a girl and almost immediately I thought - aaahhh I don't like this responsibility!!!  Being the only person that knows and not being able to say anything to anybody!!  Yvonne was trying to get it out of me earlier today - but I have made the decision to not tell a single person and then nobody can say anything to anybody!! I even spoke to my neighbour about it earlier and didn't say if it is a boy or a girl!!   I can't wait though to do the reveal - I imagine it will feel like a huge weight has lifted off my shoulders!  I also feel very honored to be the one revealing this amazing bit of information!

Its amazing that this little babby is only 9.5 cm long!  Baby has Antony's nose - I said this to Lissa and she said - thank god hahah

Lissa will be 17 weeks tomorrow and Erika will be 10 weeks.  Erika has a scan on Wednesday - I guess if it is all good on Wednesday we can all relax a bit.  Lissa's scans show a perfectly formed little person which was so awesome - wish I could have scans like that - and get to find out the gender - but they wouldn't let us know back then!!  I think it will be cool if Adam and Erika have a boy and a girl.  Their preference is 1) two girls, 2) a boy and a girl 3) two boys.  My exact preference when I was pregnant with twins.  Adam wants to have 2 girls and Lissa have a girl too.  Yvonne wants Lissa to have a boy so if she comes around when Lissa is here they'll all be boys together!  (Yvonne has 3 boys).

oh - cat has a mouse...

I had to run off and get the mouse off the cat - but unfortunately it was already dead - we still have to get the mouse off the cat otherwise we find bits of internal organs all over the place after they chew it up!

Anyway - that's me caught up so Lissa can stop moaning at me!  Love you Lissa!! xxx

Hungover.....

Hi

I am suffering this morning after a great impromptu night out last night!  It got to about 4pm yesterday and I'd not eaten anything - so we decided to walk down the road to the Hungry Horse, have food and come home again.  When we got there, they had a new app where you could order food and drink from your table - so that is what we did! Andy then messaged the kids and told them what table number we were - and they started sending us drinks lol!

Lissa was first - and sent a red bull with a fireball shot in it - I had just finished eating - thank god because I somehow inhaled some of it and started choking on it - and ended up coughing out a mouthful between my fingers - all over my plate! very classy!!

Then Adam sent us coffee tequila shots! these were in-between the drinks we were buying ourselves! A little later a serving of corn on the cob turned up hahaha - that was from Connor & Emily - shortly followed by another redbull and fireball!

What really made me laugh (and I was quite drunk by then too) was a girl arrived at our table and said - is everything okay with the....she looked down and saw all we had was corn on the cob in a little bowl - and we just started laughing!!

We had a really good time - and it was awesome just having random stuff just delivered to our table!  It is not like I haven't heard of this before - I just hadn't experienced it!  We walked back home and watched a boxing game (random I know) then stuff on TV then Andy put music video's on and we had a good ole sing song - until I fell asleep on the settee - and Andy basically put me to bed at about 2.30am!!

We had guests here - and they left this morning - I looked a complete state when I answered the door in my PJ's and un-brushed greasy hair - looking rough....lol

I can hear Andy getting up now I think - I am going to get a shower and make bacon butties!  We planned on putting up the xmas decorations today - hope I/we feel better and we still do it....

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