Our Christmas Holidays 2018

The Christmas holidays are over, so its definitely time I came back and spent some time on this little space of mine!

Our Christmas Holidays.

We have had such a wonderful few weeks all off together.  The boys were off school for 4 weeks so we definitely fully switched off and relaxed.  Mark had to go to the UK to do some interviews for new staff but other than that he was home with us the whole time.

I think having the 4 weeks over Christmas helped to have other focuses apart from Christmas day itself.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas, but with a shorter holiday I feel like that is all you have time to think about and it can be a bit intense!

We took a night away at Paradise Sun Hotel as a treat for Mark’s birthday.  It’s a hotel that we visit very often for lunch but we have never stayed there until now.  It was so nice to spend the night there, the rooms are really lovely.  The hotel has such a good atmosphere, it’s so relaxed and welcoming.  Honestly, I love it.  We didn’t have the best weather but as we live here that didn’t matter all that much to us!  We still took out a couple of kayaks, swam in the pool, and played on the beach.  It was perfect.

Seychelles is typically pretty busy over the Christmas holidays.  So, other than our night at Paradise Sun we tried to stay away from the hotels as much as possible.  We are lucky enough that so many hotels here are kind enough to let us use their facilities throughout the year, so we always make sure not to push our luck during busy times of the year!! We did loads of beach days and walks in the Vallee de Mai.  Just really, easy family days out.  I feel like we all really thrived from the time together.

Christmas Eve

I love Christmas Eve!  We were really organised this year and got all the wrapping out the way so we could just relax!  Mark and I have a little tradition of getting a new game to play for Christmas Eve.  We love board games!  The boys were very helpful getting everything ready for Father Christmas.  They left out mince pie and some Whiskey for him (father christmas loves whisky don’t you know!!) and some Carrots for the Reindeer.  We also left out the magic key so that he could get in the house (As you might guess, there aren’t many chimneys here!)

Unsurprisingly, the bedtime routine wasn’t as slick as usual, there was a lot of getting out of bed!  Freddie was complaining that night time took too long, it took him about an hour to get to sleep.

Arthur probably took about the same, but then woke up from midnight onwards in the hope it was morning!  Mark and I took it in turns going back into bed with him to try and get him to sleep!  He was SO excited!

Christmas Day

Despite a distinct lack of sleep all round, we had such a lovely day.  It was just the four of us this year.  We always love to be able to share Christmas with friends and family, but it was kinda nice this year for it to be just us.

After the boys opened the presents from us we took a little wander down to the beach.  The novelty of taking a walk on the beach on Christmas day has still not worn off after all these years!

Over Christmas the time difference to the UK is four hours (the clocks don’t go back or forward here so the time difference to the UK varies between 3 and 4 hours depending on the time of the year).   The good thing about the time difference is it helps to spread the day out for the kids!  We waited until the Grandparents were up before we opened gifts from them so they could see the boys opening their gifts.  Thank goodness for video calling!!

Mark cooked an amazing Christmas lunch, it really was the full works.  We definitely could have fed about 10 people, but that meant yummy left overs for the next few days!

And the Rest!

The rest of the school holidays was pretty quiet.  Mark’s birthday is on Boxing Day and this year we kept it really low key, still it was a lovely day.

Mark and I went out for New Years Eve.  We usually like to go to Les Laurier for New Year (I’d go every day if I could!).  They are currently having major renovations so the owner, a friend of ours, hosted the evening at her house!  As always, the food was amazing! We had a babysitter for the evening, shared with some friends of ours who also put their little boy to sleep at our house.  Freddie woke up in the night – something he NEVER does but was not at all upset by us not being there!  By the time we came home he was fast asleep again, having been up for about an hour with the babysitter having a good time!   Unfortunately, the late night wake up did not reward us with a lie in the next morning!!

Once Christmas was over we spent more time seeing friends and having a few playdates for the kids.  Of course there was more beach time too (sand fights are a new favourite for the boys!)

We also took a day over on La Digue.   It always feels like we have had a real holiday even when we just go for a day!  It’s so fun to be on bikes all day and go round exploring.  The boys love visiting different beaches, feeding the giant tortoises and seeing the cows (a bit of a rarity here in Seychelles!) and of course the boat ride!

 Back to Normality.

It was sad when the time came to start winding back up to get ready for school starting again.  I think, we were probably all ready for it though really!

The boys are now back at school and so the chaos of pack lunch making and school runs has started again!  It’s the start of the second term with both of them being in school.  I feel it took me most of the first term to get used to having time alone.  I’ve made a promise to myself to make more time for writing this term, so hopefully there will be a few more posts from me on here!