Christmas Osbiston style

For the past few days Mr Osbiston and I have been visiting with his family in Essex where we usually celebrate Christmas (in case anyone doesn’t know, my family is in South Africa and visiting at Christmas is insanely expensive).

I love spending time with Paul’s family, especially over the festive season because they have some awesome traditions.

Christmas Eve always means games and before we settled into Balderdash, we tried out a new game that involved pulling a card from a box and then describing a celebrity the celebrity on it to your partner. The best clue of the night (and I won’t name who it came from) was “that black paedophile” for Michael Jackson. Lol! Oh dear.

Mr Osbiston also came across a Santa top, which meant that I got to take this awesome picture of him. It’s probably my favourite picture I’ve ever taken of my husband… which says a lot for my weird sense of humour.

On Christmas Day Mr Osbiston Snr and I decided to go for a run. I hadn’t run since my birthday so I was a bit worried I was going to keel over but I managed about 4km in a sensible time and didn’t get too cold apart from my ears.

Paul’s granny joined us for the day so once we’d all had breakfast together it was time to attack all the presents under the tree.

I was utterly, utterly spoiled coming away with more presents that I can even mention, including a fabulous onesie from my husband, perfume,  clothes, pajamas, a running watch, recipe books, a scarf, tea… and the list goes on.

Then of course Doctor Who… which was… confusing. I love the Doctor but I really feel like it’s lost its sense of fun.

We used the after dinner period to do a dry run of the Boxing Day singalong. Paul and his dad are both really musical so it’s a great opportunity for them to play and sing together and for the rest of us to join in and ruin it.

Boxing Day brought Christmas round two and we were joined by his Aunt Phyllis, Aunt Andrea, Uncle John and cousins, Finn and Kyran who are 13 and 8. It’s always fun having kids around at Christmas and these two are no different. Although possibly Finn shouldn’t have stayed up quite so late playing games the night before and I’m not quite sure what Kyran is doing with these mini cracker screwdrivers.

Paul’s mum always buys great table presents and this year all the boys got bowties. I think Paul’s went especially well with the Shite Shirt I bought him for Christmas.

And here’s Paul’s Aunt Phyll with his brother, David, wearing one of the headscarves that the ladies got.

The evening ended with the second singalong, which was even noisier and slightly made me pity the neighbours.

For our final day of Christmas celebrations, Paul’s cousin, Marc, his wife, Sam and the youngest member of the family, Poppy (aged two) came over. Of course Poppy provided most of the entertainment because she is utterly adorable. No singing this time though.

We finished off the evening with films in our onesies, which is how I think all Christmases should end. I already can’t wait for Christmas 2014.