Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree

Huzzah! It's my favourite time of year and, as always, I'm getting slightly more overexcited than I should about what is essentially a special time for children. I love the baby Jesus as much as the next person, but you can't go passed an inflatable Santa for festive fun. Growing up, Maria and I enjoyed a loving yet platonic relationship, with a pair of inflatable Mr Cs, that we danced with to Christmas tunes each year. Maria famously reported a burglar in the garden one year when Dad put one up the treehouse at the end of the garden.We put our Christmas tree up on Wednesday and by 'we' I mean me. While I tried to encourage the girls to hang ornaments on the tree, they had to be the right ornaments and they had to put them where I wanted or else I'd move them there. Is this wrong? Rob (occasionally the more grown up of the two of us) said mature things like "Why don't you just let the girls put them where they want and then you can move them later?" Aaaanyway, we put up and decorated the tree, got out the new advent train, hand delivered by Nanny and Grandad in February, strung fairy lights about the place and now all is quite festive. Scarlett said she wanted to dress like "people in England do at Christmas" and so she and Flo disappeared to their rooms, returning momentarily wearing woolly hats, scarves and gloves, perfect for our current mid 20 degree weather.

I also had marathon late-night present wrapping bonanza this week, and now a large pile of gifts, bound for Santa's sleigh, is teetering in the wardrobe in the studio, which I have now locked.

Best of all was the arrival of a gift I got for myself (and Rob). Driving any distance over about an hour with the girls can be somewhat challenging. No matter how many books, colouring things and games of Simon Says and I Spy we play, the whole thing soon degenerates into some type of fisticuffs in the back seat. I like to avoid following my mum's example which was to lean an arm into the back seat and thrash it widely about until it made contact with one or other, or both, children. At the end of our camping trip a couple of weeks ago, I caught sight of Jules and Lenka's portable dvd players, strapped to their headrests. Lenka reported excellent results, almost complete silence on all journeys over an hour and an ability to hold a conversation with Jules or listen to a radio station or music of her choice. She also warned it was to be used with caution and only on long trips. Thank the lord for ebay. A few bids later I won a brand new set worth nearly $700 for the bargain price of $134. Rob and I tested it out and it works like a dream. It might be lazy parenting, but I imagine it will be a blessing when I am driving the 1,000 kilometres on the 3-day road trip to Brisbane the girls and I have planned the week of Christmas. Thanks to my ethics-free job at marie claire, I have also been able to organise free accommodation in some very nice hotels on the way up the coast in exchange for a small amount of editorial in a future issue of MC, something I could never have done at the Herald. Subsequently it is now a trip I am looking forward to rather than dreading. It's starting to look a lot like Christmas. Huzzah!