I was lucky enough to experience Christmas Day in Australia in 2008, pre-kids. We had a bbq breakfast at my cousin’s house in Perth, we swam in the ocean, lay on the beach drinking beer and then came back to the house for turkey and all the trimmings. It was pretty blissful.
This year was our first family Christmas in Brisbane. Here’s how Christmas Day looked to me, represented in stats…
Number of times I told reminded the kids not to open their presents until Daddy came home from work: 725
Number of minutes we lasted at the beach park before the boys got into an argument because they were trying to tell all the bigger kids what to do: 11
Number of jellyfish washed up on Scarborough Beach, thus scuppering my plans to let the kids have a Christmas Day paddle (because T1 would likely have tried to pick them all up): loads
Total time spent building and putting batteries in new toys: 2.5
Total time spent Skyping family: 2 hours
Number of times the kids had to wave their toys in front of the Skype camera to show off their dragon/race track/book/DVD…:too many to count
Number of times the vacuum came out to clean up the crumbs and food dropped by the kids: 3
Number of tantrums because somebody else tried to play with their toy: 16
Number of toys broken so far: 2 (not bad going)
Number of times I caught T1 stealing chocolates, biscuits and sweets: 7
Number of times he got away with it: unknown, but probably lots
Amount of tissues used to wipe E’s runny nose: too many to count
Total amount of waste packing and wrapping paper left a the end of the day: tonnes (see top picture)
Number of calories consumed: Not anywhere near as many as before I had kids as there was no time to sit down with a tin of Roses due to the amount of toy building/battery inserting to be done
Time spent laying in the beautiful sunshine: 0
Time spent relaxing with a cup of coffee: 1 minute
Total time spent building a complicated Hot Wheels track only to be left with one important looking piece left over: one hour
Time spent trying to persuade the kids to eat some turkey: 30 minutes
Time spent trying to persuade the kids to eat some carrots: 45 mins
Time spent trying to persuade the kids to eat some broccoli: 50 mins
Time spent explaining to the kids that the reason their dinner wasn’t very nice was because they’d left it for the best part of an hour and it was stone cold: so many that I lost the will to live
Amount of sparkling wine consumed to survive all of the above: 3/4 of a bottle
Time spent reading one of my new books – Maze Runner – before I fell asleep: 10 seconds
Time asleep before E rolled out of her bed and woke up screaming: 30 minutes
Time spent feeling content and happy: 24 hours
I hope your day was as fun-filled as ours!
How was your Christmas Day? Do you have any stats to add to my list?
Hi Karen,
It is wonderful to read your blog. I also have twins, a girl an a boy and They are 6 now. We also relocated our little family from England to North Brisbane 2 years ago. It is great reading your adventures and I look forward to hearing more stories from you.
Rach
Ah thank you. How does it feel two years on? I’m really excited that we’re finally settled. I can’t wait for the boys to start school and for us to get a routine going at last. We have lots of fun adventures to look forward to. Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment. xx
I wish there was a ‘like’ button for some of those!
Haha your comment serves as a ‘like’! I hope you had a great Christmas. x
I love the format you chose to describe your day. It sounds like a full-on but brilliant day! For us, I would have added: time spent panicking, looking for 7 batteries in remote controls, radios etc. for the big ones’ presents. I thought everything came with batteries these days… x
We’ve had that before so I ended up going out and buying the biggest battery stash you’ve ever seen a while ago. I now have two drawers full of them so don’t think we’ll ever run out again! I hope you had a lovely day too. x
Despite the different continent our Christmases sound uncannily similar 😉
LOVE that pic of the three of them, such a good looking bunch>
Glad you all had a fab day!
But wasting time persuading them to eat broccoli at Christmas!? Crazy lady.