Christmas With The Big Kids...

With little kids Christmas is all about Santa and presents and tinsel and lights. When you have grown up kids it seems it's mainly about logistics.

This year we have been truly blessed by being able to spend time with all of our big kids, we even managed to eat a Boxing Day Christmas dinner together. It took the arrangement skills of Norbert Dentressangle, but we did it.

We always knew this would come, but with both of our current 18 year olds working part time in the service industry, a 23 year old in full time work and Christmas week party mode, plus a 20 year old uni student, then add on two other sets of parents needing a share of the young people's time, this year was the year it got tricky.

We had to arrange, re-arrange and then with half an hour to spare and the meat already resting, we were still 2 missing and starting to think it might not happen. But they made it.

The meal was good, despite a lack of plain flour resulting in Yorkshire puddings you could have iced and called Gateau, but it only added to the event. The important thing was that we were all there. As many of us who could be. We will always have an empty chair, and in many ways that makes it more important to get everyone else together.

When your children are small you are proud of every first. That doesn't go away. What I was proudest of was that our 4 young people all retired back to the eldest's for an impromptu late night drink. Together

Being a young person today is hard work, and ours have been through more than most. Packing them all off to go for a drink together is something I always imagined as they grew up, something we almost lost entirely, and something that made my Christmas.

We miss Elspeth, we always will, and this year her father has taken it very very hard, but our young people are all back on track and forging ahead with their lives, and they are all mates. And that's the greatest gift I could have hoped for.

I hope your Christmas was a good one, and you have had many smiles.