A Very Merry Mockmas

As mentioned in my last post (Countdown to Mockmas), at the beginning of December we headed over to England to celebrate our Christmas before Christmas, affectionately named Mockmas. This meant taking Lydia on her third flight to my home land - what a little jetsetter!



How to get a baby through
the security checkpoint

Admittedly the flight over wasn't as easy as it could have been, as Lydia was not in a good mood. A squirming, whinging baby does not make for good company on a flight, even if it was only for an hour and a half.

Needless to say, it was quite a relief when we landed and got off the plane.

Lydia cheered up straight away, even managing a nice big smile for her Nan when she picked us up at the airport.

A day of shopping was on the cards for Chris and I during our first full day in England, getting those last-minute presents for the family ready in time for Mockmas.



Lydia with her
great aunt Ruby

 In the afternoon, Ruby and Jack - my mum's aunt and uncle and therefore Lydia's great great aunt and great great uncle - came over for tea. We don't get to see them often, although my brother James had invited them to his wedding in the summer, and it was great to see how happy she was while giving Lydia a cuddle.

We had arranged this get-together for a while, and we could tell Ruby was looking forward to it. When arranging a time for her to come round, my mum had said "come round any time from 3pm", to which Ruby had replied, "I'll be there AT 3pm!".

She also gave her a Christening bracelet, which is something Lydia will be able to keep as a souvenir throughout her life. Aaaaah... :)
 

Countdown to Mockmas

Most people (mainly children) look forward to Christmas with such eagerness and anticipation, longing for the big day to finally come. I'm no different. I love Christmas - the food, the colours, the decorations, and most of all spending time with family. However, at the moment I'm not counting down the days until Christmas. I'm counting the days until Mockmas.

Yes, you read that right - Mockmas.

"Mockmas" was a term coined by my brother Adam for our family Christmas this year, which is taking place on Sunday 4th December. The reason is that we can't all be there for the real Christmas Day, so we are having our own pre-Christmas Christmas to ensure we all share in the fun and festivities together.

This year is Lydia's first ever Christmas, so we really wanted her to wake up on Christmas Day (the real one) in her own home, with the tree and decorations all around. I know that she won't remember anything of her first Christmas, but it's a special moment for us. The first Christmas that we'll share together as a new family. I'll even attempt to cook a proper Christmas dinner for my in-laws, allowing Lydia to have a blended version as well.

Both my brothers will be visiting their in-laws on Christmas Day this year as well, so Mockmas is our opportunity to have our normal family Christmas, albeit a bit earlier than usual. I'm looking forward to Lydia's face when she sees the decorations and the Christmas tree, and then the fun of opening presents. Again, she probably won't realise what's going on around her, but we will enjoy it nonetheless.

I know my family is looking forward to it as well, and I'm happy that we will all get to share this moment together.

Just means that I need to sort out all the Mockmas presents before next weekend. I've already bought a few but not all, with some people harder to shop for than others... Fortunately, last minute Mockmas shopping shouldn't be too stressful as all the other shoppers still have a couple of shopping weekends to go until their big day, leaving me free to casually saunter around and pick up what I need (and possibly stop at Burger King and/or Subway if need be).

Ho ho ho!

Going quackers for Christmas

I am a massive fan of Christmas. I love everything about the festive season, from singing along to Christmas songs and putting up the tree and decorations, to the big turkey dinner and spending the day with family.

It's a time of year when everyone seems to feel more positive and happy. Whether that's because they are dreaming of gorging themselves on chocolates and mince pies or because they just like shiny decorations, people are more fun at this time of year. It may only be mid-November, but I have already seen some Christmas decorations hanging out of people's windows in my village.

We bought our tree and some decorations a couple of weeks ago, but we won't be putting any up until we get back from Mockmas (my mum's cleverly-coined term for our early Christmas celebrations) in England at the beginning of December. That hasn't stopped me from getting into the Christmas spirit though.

In the last couple of days I have found myself singing some Christmas songs to Lydia, including such classics as Bing's "White Christmas", Elton's "Step Into Christmas", Jonah's "Stop the Cavalry" and Mariah's "All I Want For Christmas Is You". Singing those famous songs made me feel all Christmassy, and I decided to do some Christmas-related searches on Google for some inspiration on how to either celebrate Christmas or the decorations we could put up.

One of the first things I found was this:

Penguins dressed as Santa and Elves!! What could be better than that??

This has very quickly become possibly my most favourite picture of all time. It's from the March of the Christmas Penguins at the Everland attraction park in Yongin, South Korea in November 2010. I have never had any particular desire to go to the Koreas, North or South, but I think I now have a very good reason.

In fairness, these penguins were probably a bit warm with the extra layer of clothing, given that the temperature in Yongin mid-November tends to be about the same as these penguins' (they look like the African/Jackass penguin species from the Spheniscus order) local habitat temperature. Might have hampered their ability to swim as well...

Anyway, I am a massive fan of Christmas, and I love penguins. That's pretty much what this blog entry is about - I just wanted to share the picture of Christmas penguins with the world.

Seriously, are there any better photos in the world?

Hooray for Christmas and hooray for penguins!