Christmas 2013

Christmas day this year was amazing. Both the boys went to bed so excited on Christmas Eve and woke up equally as excited to find out the Santa had finished off his Guinness and mine pie an Rudolph had drank his milk and ate his carrot. Its so magical when the children have this undying belief in Santa and get so excited about it. Anyway Santa left a rather full sack of presents for both the boys which they promptly tucked into just as soon as breakfast was done and dusted.

 

Joshua digging deep to get the last few presents out of his sack.

Brandon was well into the presents this year and needed no help at all getting his open.

Here is Brandon off his Mini Go wind up toy.

One of Brandon's star presents was this spiral ramp for his garage which allows him to race two cars at once. He has wanted this for ages.

Joshua really wanted this children's wood working set this year so we decided to buy it for him. Its pretty amazing really as it has a foam type of wood which is coloured like wood and even has a grain. Then the kit has several tools, screws, nails etc. to cut and build with the wood.  Its the kind of toy that I really need to sit down with Joshua and spend some quality time. But he was adamant that he wanted to get it out and build something on Xmas day.

Brandon also wanted to join in despite all his own toys to play with.

Joshua marking out a piece of wood before starting to cut.

And how about this, our first build was this jet fighter plane.

Joshua did a great job putting all the screws in. Its a great toy for teaching the boys basic construction skills.

Brandon built this small glider plan with some off cuts. However he has told me he wants to build the tank next.

Everyone knows Brandon loves his Hot Wheels and other than his Innotab 2 his next favourite present is this really cool Hot Wheels wall track. This is such a genius idea to use up wall space to mount a race car track rather than having tracks spread out all across the floor. This one is about 4ft wide and 2ft tall and has a motorised lift running up the middle the transport the cars up and down the track automatically. 

I think Brandon is a bit happy with his Hot Wheels wall track which now sits proudly in his bedroom.

I think I am going to need to stock up on batteries as I can see this toy being used pretty much daily.

Joshua's main present for 2013 was this rather large radio controlled tug boat complete with a water squirting tower. Perfect for chasing and shooting ducks!!!

Joshua is pretty impatient and was not going to last Christmas day without trying his boat. So we headed over to a very windy and very flooded Wick park. Unfortunately the maiden voyage was not without hiccups. Initially the boat was going very well and is pretty rapid. Joshua figured out the water squirter controls in no time. However the boat appears pretty top heavy and with the strong winds and current the boat was leaning over at about 45 degrees as you turned into a corner and due to this it was taking on a lot of water. End result was a capsize!!!! Fortunately it was about 6ft from the edge of the lake so the boat was recovered without anyone getting wet. We have since dried it out, checked it still works and will now wait for better conditions before our next launch. 

Joshua with controller in hand operating his boat before the capsize.

As always the boys got far too many lovely presents to mention them all on the blog. Lets just say they were very spoilt again by friends and family. The task for the next week is to start finding a home to store all the toys tidily.

 

At the end of the day we all sat down for a lovely Xmas dinner and both boys did extremely well with their eating. Joshua tried some Xmas pudding for the first time but ended up spitting it out and switching back to Brandon's chocolate yule log. 

Tina and the boys out our very posh festive dinner table.

We four King's all sitting down to enjoy a Christmas dinner. Amazingly all wearing Xmas hats as well - usually it is only me.

Finally a picture of the boys wearing festive hats with their Nanny.

I have thoroughly enjoyed playing lots of new games and toys with the two boys over the Xmas week. I know I have said it before, but the toys these days are so much cooler than when I was a kid. Although Joshua did get a few classics this year such as Guess Who, Twister and Battle Ships. Next on the calendar is Brandon's 4th birthday in just over 4 weeks time.