We had a thanksgiving meal last Friday (once we'd persuaded Lily it was more important than watching Shortland Street and making her leave her flat)and then started the Christmas decorating. It coincided with Hannah moving out into a flat so was very hectic. Bot now we have a relatively tidy and quiet house decorated for Christmas. Isaac is by our teddy bear Christmas tree that stands in the hall and Noah got to turn on the outside lights for the first time last night as it was December 1st (it doesn't get dark enough until nine o'clock in this NZ summer).
All eight kids will be here (along with four partners) for our Christmas meal this year, we will eat early evening, so Sam and Anika and Hannah and Thomas can spend lunch with their other families and Beth and James other family aren't having their celebration till Boxing Day when James' brother returns from Japan.
Noah finishes school on Thursday and has already had the graduation ceremony for his special needs unit. Isaac and I attended but Noah didn't - or at least he was the other side of a locked door into the gym, hidden away in the foyer. When I arrived his teacher said he had run off and as this is a fairly regular occurrence we decided to wait for him to turn up again. After an hour, the ceremony was in full swing but I was really worried, came home to see if he was there and was then ready to call the police. Finally a teacher aide and the school secretary found him sitting quietly in the unused foyer a bit sad that he had heard them singing but hadn't been able to take part in the song he'd practised but otherwise Ok. It still adds wrinkles to my face with each disappearing act though!
