T’was the night before….

There have been so many small details to remember about this Christmas season, it will be hard to get them all into the blog but I will do my best over the next few days to catch up with myself.  In the meantime, I will keep tonight short:

As I write, it is very late at night on Christmas Eve. The girls went to bed eagerly, but well past their normal bedtimes and there has been no sign of them since.  Which is pretty good, considering their frequent “I need a glass of water” or “she’s not letting me fall asleep” trips downstairs after they’ve been put to bed.

No, tonight was Christmas eve, so there were preparations made for Santa’s arrival, and nobody stirred from out of their bed.

Grace wore the reindeer-antler headband all night long.

The table laid out next to the fireplace to welcome Santa contained two pieces of an Irish chocolate bar called “wispa” – incidentally, quite fluffy and delicious – and a small glass of “Famous Grouse” Scotch whiskey…I know, I know, it should have been Jameson or something Irish, but we work with what we’ve got.

The table also contained notes from each of the girls to Santa.  Tara’s note explained the chocolate by saying we were completely out of cookies (actually she said “biscuits” which is what the Irish call cookies.  Grace asked Santa if he was “my Mam or my Dad” – gotta love the Irish spelling of “mom”. 

So Santa arrived well after the girls were asleep, and drank the whiskey, ate most of the chocolate, delivered presents, and wrote notes back to each of the girls…in one of which he apologized for the mess Rudolph made of the apple and left on the fireplace hearth……hmmph..Reindeers.

Don't worry about the Whiskey, Rudolph will steer.

I’ll let you know about Christmas day as soon as the dust settles.  In the meantime, if you have a fast connection and want to see a video of the town we live in, the following video was made by a group of merchants in the town, shot on the main streets- which are just a little wider than my arms can reach – and completely captures the magical feeling of Christmas in Ennis.   (although, if you are watching the video with someone who is from Ennis, you will have to ignore all the “oh, look there’s Mickey!” and “isn’t that Andrea?” stuff)

Anyway, here it is, and as they say here: “Happy Christmas”