We're having a much needed and wonderfully lazy Sunday morning. The children are upstairs somewhere squabbling quietly amongst themselves and still playing with their Christmas presents and T emerged for about 15 minutes and then disappeared, probably back to bed. I had a brownie for breakfast and am still in my nighty. The various pets demanding food or love and attention are being studiously ignored. We may have a swim later, mainly to try and straighten out aching bodies. 
The past 6 weeks or so have been pretty brutal, although we got through them somehow. Since we still have not managed to find experienced staff we simply did not have time to start training so close to Christmas. This meant 3am starts and 20 hour days for T, putting us up there with the Chinese Takeaways (which we ate most nights) and T driving past revellers on his way into the bakery every morning. In the week before Christmas I took leave to help out and the days blurred by in a cycle of pastry making, baking, icing and deliveries. The boys sort of got on with things and Claudette waged war on the home front, with the kitchen looking like it had been flour-bombed most days and all the machines on constant cycles trying to keep up with everything.
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| This is how I did NOT look |
Gratifyingly, the Bakery was super-busy and we had a wonderful response to our Christmas list, for which we are both relieved and grateful. On Christmas Eve we made almost 500 mince pies and only stopped when we ran out of mince meat and apart from some gift boxes we had to tuck away for our own presents, we were completely sold out everyday. Tyler went grocery shopping at 10pm on Christmas Eve to make sure we had some fresh milk in the house but we had managed to get to the bottle store for champagne 5 minutes before it closed, demonstrating yet again the priorities in our household (keep Mommy happy).
On Christmas Day morning the boys were mercifully kept pre-occupied with their stockings which Santa (and Grandma) had so thoughtfully provided. We also woke to a power failure so a great excuse to not to have to do anything apart from just open presents. For Christmas I received 3 aprons, India Hicks Body Polish and alcohol which I'm not quite sure what this says about me, but will all come in very useful!
Luckily we had been invited out for Christmas lunch otherwise it would have been Chinese takeways again, and we had a lovely afternoon in our old neighbourhood eating delicious turkey and all the trimmings and playing charades. We were happy to come home with full tummies and go straight to bed with 8 hours sleep being the best present of all! On Boxing Day we only got out of our pyjamas at lunch time and then suddenly had to pull ourselves together as we had friends over for a braai.
The rest of the week has been beautifully cool and quiet, with me on holiday and not getting through my 'To Do' list and the boys doing science experiments, 'killing' each other on the Wii and spreading Lego all over the house. Tyler and I both scrubbed up a bit yesterday for a very pleasant evening at friends for New Years drinks with the most delicious Jamaican food imaginable. We are planning to have our very first New Years 'At Home' just with our boys, the RoyalVariety Show on BBC, some sparklers and a delicious meal that T is planning. Couldn't think of anyway or anyone I'd rather be doing this with.
Happy New Year to all our family and frinds around the world and hope that 2013 is both onward and upward for all.
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