We need a shield generator - Christmas madness

On to Christmas fun. Our fun began on Christmas Eve with the updating of the Christmas decorations. Although we put up our tree on the first day of advent (or at least I do - B2, being hindu, doesn't really care when the tree goes up, but joins in because it's fun), this year it was a bit of a rush job because that day happened to coincide with wedding anniversary celebrations on BOTH sides of the family. And then we were busy, so on Christmas Eve, when we'd finished tidying the house, we finished decorating the tree.
This year, we created a section of the tree with a Return of the Jedi theme. The story behind that is that last year we hadn't acquired a star for the top of the tree yet, but we did have a Death Star thingy designed to be stuck on car windows. What the heck, said we, it's a star isn't it? So it got wired to the top of the tree, and created quite a conversation piece.
Most especially, my brother Will insisted that we should have a family of ewoks living in the tree under it. This is not strictly correct, as what we had was a copy of the first Death Star, and the ewoks lived under the shadow of the second one, but what the hey. Only real Star Wars nerds like me would notice that.
So this year, even though we now have a proper star at the top of the tree, the death star made a comeback, only this time, we also had ewoks - in the form of some ancient stickers that I've probably had for twenty years, which I stuck on to cardboard and turned into decorations to hang on the tree. But this was not enough. Bhautik decided to dig out some old figurines he had, and now we've got Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, Darth Vader and the Millenium Falcon as well. Not to mention a Darth Vader Pez dispenser. B2 put up most of these decorations with a constant muttering of "We need a shield generator, we need a shield generator, WE NEED A SHIELD GENERATOR. Or anything that looks like a satellite dish would do." Eventually I took pity on him and granted the temporary loan of the lid of a mini Bitty Bin that I use for keeping beads in. It was pink - bright, hot pink - but this didn't seem to bother him. It looked vaguely like a satellite dish and that was good enough. So he took lots of photos of the decorated tree, I finished wrapping presents, and we went to bed.

Christmas Day we went to Church (thanks B2 for accompanying me and not looking too bored), came back, had breakfast and then headed down to my parents' house for Christmas lunch. We had a great time, chatting online with Will (who is now living in London, although he went to his girlfriend Liz' house in Cork for Christmas) and catching up with all the family.
It was a great day, though it culminated in a major scare when Fergus (my 3-year-old cousin, formerly featured in the trip to the park) ran across the road in front of a car when we were all out the front seeing each other off. He is a very, very lucky boy. He came close enough to being hit that for a while we thought he might have been, but since a trip to hospital confirmed that the only injuries he received were a few scratches and bruises, we think he might have just fallen over. The poor driver of the car was most distraught (as you would be), but her quick actions probably made a big difference to the outcome. I think that Fergus has already forgotten the whole experience, but the rest of the family learnt a valuable lesson in how fast kids can move. One that it'll probably take us a while to get over.
Having been heavily involved in administering first-aid to Fergus (seeing as how I've been a member of St John Ambulance Australia for nearly 7 years), I was fairly exhausted by the end of the evening, so we came home, collapsed on the couch and watched a few episodes from the Goodies DVD I got for Christmas. Classic British humour, excellent for de-stressing.

Boxing Day was a bit quieter. We hosted B2's parents and his brother Kek to lunch, which was good fun. I successfully made malai koftas, which Rekha was very impressed with.

I think I'd better stop blogging now. My main reason for writing so long today was to distract myself from the fact that B2 went sky-diving today, in an effort to make me a full widow and not just a PhD one. Thankfully this effort has failed, he's called me to say he had a good time and that he'll be home soon. So thanks for reading this far, and byeeeeeeeeeeeeee