What we hadn't counted on was:
a) a milk flood in the kitchen (that's what you get when you leave a two and a half year old to get breakfast cereal on his own)
b) a potential fire hazard (dozing Grandma only vaguely watching 'Frozen' with grandchildren whilst a roaring gas fire flared near an entire pile of instruction manuals for all the various train sets the boys were gifted with (not one of which has yet been constructed)
c) the discovery that not even a single swatch of loo roll was to be found in any of the bathrooms
How ironic that with a heaving fridge (which necessitates an impromptu and usually unsuccessful game of 'Jenga' each time you need to get anything bloody out of it), healthy looking wine rack, and enough sweets to rot the teeth of a small village in India, we should run out of something as vital as loo roll. Nightmare.
No mind. That was eventually remedied after an emergency run to the local Co-op, requiring a somewhat garish (according to the husband) application of green eyeshadow and an all black ensemble. Whatever. I can't help it if I'm a frustrated artist - and besides, I'm sure I was a drag queen in my former life. That's the only way to explain my love of all things glittery, leopard print and leather. C'est la vie.
Anyway, rather regretfully our 'BED DAY' never came to fruition and instead ended up as a domestic version of Survivor as our riot of stir-crazy boys spent the day chucking popcorn around the front room, stealing all batteries from various remote controls to get their toy cars careening around the place all at the same time, and tried to wrestle to death and prematurely end each others lives, and the husband and I were forced to fortify ourselves by substantially depleting our wine rack beginning as we intended to go on - with a 15% Rioja we thought might be up to the task.
Now here we sit, Christmas cartoons blaring on telly, Grandma and Auntie hiding upstairs from crazy sugar-fuelled monsters, and stuffing our faces with candied nuts, shortbread, turkish delight and red wine. Dinner needs to be prepared, but I find myself staring longingly at my lit-up-from-within gingerbread house (which thus far has managed to sustain the attempted attacks from the boys to crack the enticing melted jolly rancher windows) and wishing I lived in it...by myself...or at the very least wishing that we had been able to move to a bigger house this year. One with a basement where mental children could be locked up with bags of Haribo and all three Toy Story movies whilst the husband and I sat upstairs in 'the library' listening to classical music, sipping port, and reclining peacefully, with only the sound of turning pages to distract from the crackling fire....
Yeah right. Off to make homemade Oreo Cookie Ice Cream. Because why stop now? But first I must wrestle the giant can of Pringles from Egg, make sure the baby doesn't electrocute himself trying to charge up his black mini cooper remote controlled car from a live plug, and try and cajole Dumpie out of his new Xmas pj's for the second day running. I'll take one out of three.
