Our Story of Christmas

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On Sunday morning, we got up at a reasonable time and headed off to a garden centre on the other side of Cardiff. I'd been informed by a work colleague that it had a brilliant grotto with Santa and his missus, so that was good enough for me. Out of the three of us, I was the most excited as Mr. TheBoyandMe is a man and it takes more than that to get his enthusiasm enthused on a Sunday morning, and The Boy has not a clue who Father Christmas is.

With enough inner mistletoe for the three of us, we plodded off and found that yes indeed it had a fab grotto with Saint Nick and every-fink! Including a two hour queue!

With Mr. TBAM promising me that he didn't mind if I returned the next morning with The Boy, we had a good gander at the decorations and the pretty lights, played with some expensive carousels that we shouldn't have and explored the multitude of Christmas trees ready to be lovingly picked.

Upon arriving home and wolfing down our lunch, Mr. TBAM went into the loft and got our bargain Christmas tree (£100 reduced to £20 in a January sale five years ago), put The Boy to bed and I got busy 'growing' our tree, took me an hour to do what nature takes decades to do. (Plus no needles, no sap and no rash! Hurrah!)

When The Boy woke up and came downstairs, he walked into the dining room to see the six-footer twinkling away with over 160 white lights on it. A very different reaction to last year, as he paused, took a little step back and burst into the biggest grin ever. We then spent the next hour decorating the tree together, and his skills have definitely improved since last year as he put one decoration onto one 'branch' and didn't take them back off again; always a bonus!

And so to the title of this post:

Christmas 2009: Jingle Bells

Christmas 2010: Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus

Christmas 2011: A Smelly Stocking

This is the star I bought for our first Christmas together as husband and wife ten years ago. Fitting that it's placed on the top now by our child.

You see we buy The Boy a decoration each year to go on the tree, and write on it to commemorate the year it was given. This way when he moves out (at the age of 59, certainly not a day before!) and decorates his own family tree he will already have a good collection of quality decorations to start him off.

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I'm linking these up to three great Christmas linkies

CreatingChristmas

Mummy Mishaps' Christmas Tree linky

Thinly Spread

SWF Seeks A New BFF

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No not me don't worry! Having just celebrated ten years of marriage, I think Mr. TheBoyandMe might be a little concerned to see me using asingles dating service.

The other day the 'My Pictures' screensaver started up on the laptop. The Boy absolutely adores watching the pictures flash up and was fascinated by one of them that he hasn't seen before; a group shot of our wedding. I opened up the picture for him to study in greater detail and we spent a good ten minutes identifying the people in it. He realised who mummy and daddy were, could find the immediate relatives but some of the extended family were a bit trickier, and some of his cousins were just a twinkle in their daddies' eyes at the time.

Looking around the group was fascinating to see the relationships that have flourished or withered since our wedding day. Two of the couples were married within a few months of us (one of them since divorced sadly, the other still on the up), two more marriages have had their trials and tribulations but still going strong, one couple split with my friend now happily married to her millionaire (I kid you not) and a little Welsh Cake cooking, one has since found her dream husband, and one just seems to have no luck.

For this final friend, my heart breaks. All she wants is to settle down and have a family, but it's just not happening. Having moved from Cardiff to the south coast of England earlier this year to settle down with someone who she thought was Mr. Right, she's found out he was Mr. Alright-Not-Now-Love-I'm-Busy-Talking-To-This-Other-Woman and has had to relocate cities and jobs again.

I'm not sure why she has such difficulty; she's slim, attractive, bubbly, successful (a store manager in a well-known high-street store), caring and funny. Somehow though, she seems to keep finding men who are incapable of maintaining a relationship for longer than a year. I've told her that she needs to look at the relationships in a different light, base them on friendship for longevity rather than his ability to hold a pint of lager, packet of crisps and a cheeky vimto without spilling a drop. She has decided that she will be using an online dating facility from now on, and at least that way she can get all the awkward questions out the way and sort the wheat from the chaff!

I'm hoping that when I've finished celebrating the next ten years of wedded bliss, I will look at that picture and be safe in the knowledge that she found Mr. Right and not another Mr. Alright-You'll-Do!

This is a sponsored post.

Maternal Love

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This morning I went out shopping with my mum and The Boy. It wasn't a massive trip anywhere special, we weren't after anything specific, and no amazing bargains were purchased (apart from the Christmas cooking book that we bought in Matalan, and the cherry liquers in Marks and Spencer).

I've come home and I'm exhausted; it's a grey, Wintery day and it's cold. The thermometer on my car dashboard said 8°C but I think that was it's goal rather than reality. The Boy is currently nestled soundly asleep in his cot upstairs, I should be taking the opportunity to have a nap, and the dishwasher is whirring away in the background.

I know you're wondering why I'm telling you all this but I've just opened my inbox and seen a post notification from someone that I genuinely consider to be a friend, were it not for technological and geographical confines. I scanned it briefly to get a gist of its contents before I've opened it in a browser to read and comment on. However, I'm in tears already. In this post, she talks about the pain of losing her mother, and that is one of my greatest fears.

Fear, or acknowledged eventual outcome?

I dread the day that my mum doesn't turn up with a loaf of bread and some milk because "I thought you might be short of them". Or phones and says "come on, let's go to Matalan." Or rings because she wanted to rant about something that my father has done (normally breathing to be honest). My mum is one of my best friends and as much as I may groan about the fact that she gave The Boy fishfingers for lunchtime instead of ham, I cannot imagine how it would feel to not have that in my life.

We're inordinately lucky that my mum looks after The Boy while I work and never once have I ever thought it to be about the money. In all honesty, if she couldn't have him then I wouldn't work. That's for various reasons of which I won't go into now, however I'm lucky that that's never been an issue. It was always assumed on everyone's part that she would look after him and she does it brilliantly.

She is the one who taught him how to do a jigsaw. She's the one who taught him how to draw a 'kiss'. I don't have a problem with any of it. And despite me inwardly groaning at the mess when I get home at 5pm and find my 66 year old mother on her knees pouring imaginary cups of tea, I also smile and don't mind because it means they've been playing all day long.

The Boy adores her. She adores him. Rightly, I adore her because she's my mum.

And I don't know where I'd be without her.

The Gallery: My Inspiration

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And so the tricky Tara is back to giving us testing tasks:

Inspirational People.
Who has inspired you? A relative, your own mum, your dad, a close friend, someone famous, a stranger even.

The obvious one for me is my mum; she's amazing and has been through so much. However, she'd hate the thought of me writing anything about her on my blog, so I'm going to honour that.

While she has been the wind beneath my wings (thanks Bette) for many years, and Mr. TheBoyandMe is my rock, my new guiding light is none other than this being:

Is that not the best inspiration of them all?

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The Gallery: Happiness

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This week, we've been ordered to be happy! Tara says:

Let's shine a bright light.
This week's Gallery theme is: A Happy Memory

I could be predictable and show you a photo of The Boy when he was first born, or playing on the beach, or even when my 12 weeks scan, but I've decided to rewind further than that.

I'm going back to 1980.

Get your knitted cardigans and flared jeans out now.

I was only three years old and the youngest of four children; two boys and two girls in that order. My eldest brother (incidentally the only one of the three who knows the name of this blog and therefore might read this) is twelve years older than me, and was great fun to play with. He's good with littlies.

The four of us used to play for hours and hours in the garden, it was a real treasure trove of imaginative lands. Obviously with such a big range in ages between us, there was only a small window of time when this play existed. A year earlier and I was still a toddler, two years later and my eldest sibling had discovered the pub! However, during those few golden years we would race around in go-carts, splash in our paddling pool, chase each other with the hose-pipe, build tunnels in the snowdrifts, get tied to the cherry tree by our plaits (although that might just have been me) and make marvellous mud pies.

Here, I'm making my eledest brother better with some special medicine, otherwise known as a leaf.

They really were the golden years of childhood, I hope that The Boy enjoys his as much as I did mine.

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The Gallery: Black & White

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The lovely Tara has set us a challenge this week of 'Black and White'.

In my mind straight away popped two photos that I wanted to share for this post and I can't find them now! They're stunning photos as well, one is of my nan when she was approximately twenty years old and was a formal studio photo. She looked so young and happy in it, anticipating the joy of her entire life. The other photo was of my bampi in his army uniform in Africa, he was in the Desert Rats. A few years ago I had the small snapshots blown up and edited to remove the creases, then framed for my mum. The minute she opened them, she did something that I've never seen before, she cried with nostalgia and affection for the parents who died years before.

Unfortunately they are still packed up from her move so I can't even scan them in to show you.

In the meantime I want to share a selection of other gems from the past. They're photos of my mum, my dad and his brother, my brothers, my nan and her sister. All show the simplicity of black and white, the innocence of youth.

Wait! I've found them, so apologies for editing this post to add them both in but they are the ones I originally wanted to show.

Both were taken in the Winter of 1943 while bampi was serving in the Desert Rats. Bampi was 26 and already looks like life serving in World War 2 has taken its toll. Nan was just 21 and still fresh-faced. They married six months after these photos were taken and a year later my mum was born (their only child as my nan suffered a still-birth at 8 months pregnant).

1923 – 1994

1917 – 1980.

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If it's not me, or her, or her, that means it could be you!

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I know that sounds like one of those jokes doesn't it? Those awful jokes? One in four people are something or other. However, in this case it's not a joke. It's real-life.

1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in their lives.

Bit of a shocker isn't it? 1 in 4! I would never have anticipated it to be as high as that, but unfortunately it is.

I'm not about to confess here that I have been the victim of domestic violence, because I haven't: I'm lucky. I've witnessed it, and I've seen the aftermath. I've seen the woman scared, petrified for her children above herself. I've felt her fear, and on her behalf, I've felt the felt the fury and anger that this is happening to her.

Together Refuge and Avon are working to help raise awareness of this massive problem in our society.

Domestic violence is not about a row going wrong or someone losing control.

Domestic violence is all about control. Domestic violence is the repeated, deliberate use of control by one partner over another. It's bullying, plain and simple. We teach the children in school that bullying is deliberate and repeated. Domestic violence is the same thing. It's done for power, to make the perpetrator feel better about themselves.

I belong to a toddler group which focuses on raising money for playgroups etc. in the area. Last year it was our tenth anniversary and we gave a larger grant than we've ever given before, to the county's women's refuge. The manager of the centre came out to talk to us about life for the residents. We sat in the host's plushy sitting room with our Pinot Grigio's sparkling with the condensation from the balmy summer's evening. Very soon, the glasses weren't the only things chilled as we heard censored and edited versions of these women's stories.

Domestic abuse can be physical, emotional, financial or sexual.

I know that the Refuge & Avon campaign to raise awareness centres on domestic violence, but I just wanted to highlight that not every victim is a literal punchbag, some are emotional ones.

One resident of the centre at the time was a middle-class SAHM to two teenage daughters in private single-sex schools. A nice life on the surface, however, the husband had CCTV in every room in the house so he could see what his recluse wife was constantly up to. And a chauffeur collected the daughters from the deliberately chosen school so as to prevent any dalliances with friends. They were prisoners. It was emotional and financial abuse. It was deliberate and it was repetitive.

One day, the wife walked out of the house and turned up at the office of the refuge centre. Arranging for her and her daughters to turn up later, she collected them from school and never went home. She was lucky that she had a place there. Other women in need may have to be taken to refuges over 80 miles from their hometown to find somewhere that has a space.

Here are some rather startling statistics about domestic violence:

  • One woman in four will experience domestic violence at some point in her life.
  • Up to two women are killed by current or former partners every week in England and Wales.
  • Every single day in the UK, 30 women attempt suicide as a result of domestic violence.
  • The police receive a domestic violence call every minute in the UK.
  • In 90% of domestic violence incidents in family households children are in the same or the next room. 50% of those children are directly abused.
  • Only 16% of domestic violence incidents are reported to the police – the majority of women suffer in silence.

Do you know what stands out from that list: Only 16% of domestic violence incidents are reported to the police but they only receive one call every minute.

Brings it home how frequent it is, doesn't it?

One last thought to leave you with. This one things sticks in my mind from our enlightening evening a year ago.

Most acts of domestic violence occur after a sporting match.

I can no longer bear to watch sports on television, or hear the encouragement coming through windows in the neighbourhood because I know what is going to happen at the end of the programme.

For more information please visit 1in4women.com, or their Facebook page.

I was asked to blog about this but I was not paid for it, nor would I have accepted any payment. Facts and statistics have come from www.1in4women.com

The Magic Man

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When I was growing up, during the summer months, we would be host-families for European students. As a family with four children in it, it was an easy income for my mum and, as we couldn't afford to go abroad, a great experience to meet teenagers from Italy, Spain, France, Romania, Germany, Holland, Norway, and sometimes Japan too! At one point we nick-named ourselves United Nations!

After a few years, we progressed to hosting the teachers on these trips and one year we had a gentle, German giant come to stay with us. He was actually training to be a high-school teacher and this was good experience for him. Now he was at the time, only a few years older than me and a real laugh so I will admit to temporarily developing a small crush on him. This quickly dissipated when he lived with us for his gap year overseas as part of his studies. Nothing can put you off a man quicker than living with him.

The summer after he stayed with us for a year, he returned to stay with us for the usual three weeks of the summer and it coincided with my birthday. We had a barbecue to celebrate with my friends and he did what he does best: MAGIC!

This was well over 10 years ago and, although mum stopped having foreign students soon after, we have remained in contact. Every Summer he returns to now lead the trips with his students and even though they stay over 50 miles away, he always comes and has a meal with the entire family. From the first time he stayed with us, he has seen our family grow to include two husbands and three little ones. He has settled down and got married a few years ago.

His magic has developed, he now does shows for children and is really good at it. Last year, my nephew was captivated by his magic, and has spent the entire year declaring that if something is broken we must call 'The Magic Man' to fix it!

Last Monday, The Magic Man visited for the evening again. This year to my mum and dad's new house. With him on the coach he had brought three suitcases: one for his clothes, two of his magic tricks. He treated us to a brilliant magic show which lasted an hour! In the end, I had to stop him as I had no more space on the Flip Cam! As usual, he had us all captivated, and while I know how he does a few of the tricks because he has either shown me or practised them with me, there were some that are a complete mystery to all of us!

Unfortunately, this may well be the last year that we see him for a few years. Happily for him and his wife, they are having their first child and he probably won't do the trips again for some time. We may be able to visit him in Germany in the future, but for the meantime we'll have to stick with e-mails, texts and Facebook! It's lovely to see how we have grown up together and created our own families now.

I'd like to leave you with an extract of the magic show so you can appreciate The Magic Man.

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