Day 2.349: "Christmas" and "What have we done?"

Part 1: Christmas...

Our Christmas started in earnest with our special Christmas Eve service at church yesterday evening. Exile #2 and I planned a shortened but otherwise traditional carol service - let's call it "Six Lessons and Carols" - which included the kids building a nativity scene as the story was told through the Bible readings.

Today brought this:

...happy chaos. Not too much new stuff, lots of generous gifts which will be either very useful or much loved or both.

I think if you could bottle joy and sell it on eBay, we could have made a killing from Exile #3 today. This doll has been basically the only item on her Christmas list for months, but she was convinced she wouldn't be receiving it (mostly because we weren't planning on getting it until very late in the process):

We also had a fantastic Christmas dinner including gluten- and dairy-free bread-sauce (no mean achievement when you think about it). We also enjoyed talking to family on Skype, reading stories, singing songs and playing games together.  At one point, we were playing a game where each person adds a word to the end of a list and then the next person has to remember it and add another word.  In this version, the only rule was that the words had to start with the same 'sound'.  The first round used 'ch' and went quite smoothly, the second one used 'b' and at one point the words went as follows:
Me: ball
Exile #2: bear
Exile #4: but
It wasn't until Exile #3 was reciting the list that we realised what we would be saying for the rest of the game.

An excellent day - we really can't complain.

Part 2: ...what have we done?

Oh yeah, we bought E5N1 a drum-kit. It's tiny, extremely cute and very loud - just like its new owner.

Oh go on then, since it's Christmas - you can have pop pun 107 for title(s) watchers - if you want it!