Christmas

We don't do Christmas well

All 3 auties under one roof among noise, decorations, noise, larger crowds, santy on tv etc

My kids can't survive on bank holidays so you can imagine a long ass holiday

Santy, yep my autie kids are terrified of him, even when on Peppa pig, ben and Holly, cbbs oh my God get him off
The screams, the meltdown, self harming

Visitors, again my auties aren't a fan, my non auties love when people come over however as do I but the auties  will gladly show them the door

Presents, no interest at all, they couldn't care less and opening presents irritates them as they hate the noise the wrapping paper makes

Decorations frustrate them as they are too loud, bright, sparkly, clanky, too much stimulation

They do love the goodies Christmas brings, the chocolate, crisps, pastries, yep food is the real present here

We dread Christmas every year, it's just torture for us, so much so it got so stressful with ds believing in santy (night owls and wake at a pin drop auties)  the magic of him was ruined every year anyway as could only open presents when auties sorted and in a different rooms and then had to be quiet, couldn't play with toys that where noisy as would upset preteen and twins etc
We told 9 year old he does not exist, it broke my heart but it was just something we had to do
He didn't give a Monkeys tho, we where not too surprised, I think he was actually more relieved,  all he cared about was that he got his laptop , he showed no upset or heart break
He actually said he kinda knew anyway as the movies made him think about it too much
So yeah Christmas movies aren't the magical thing you think them to be

Last year was the first year we had our extension and it made a huge difference

We planned in January 16 for Xmas 17
We moved and forfeited respite to get extra over Xmas holidays and it was just a really good move
We saved up money so we could do a lot of activities over the holidays with 18 and 9 year old like cinema, meals out, bowling, trip to relatives in Dublin, have relatives from Dublin stay here for a few nights, shopping, we just wanted to make it as much about them as possible as we are aware previous Christmas's really sucked and  how much of their childhood was robbed from them
They themselves will tell you they hate Christmas, heart breaking

Well we had the best Christmas ever
Bear was in respite
We had our Christmas Eve dinner on the 23rd with family, we went out for Christmas dinner on the 24th and we had a loud autism friendly Christmas day on the 25th and  26th and we went out the 27th and 28th again
Everything was brought forward by a day, we even done presents on the 24th as bear (preteen) was in respite  and we got a lot of in home for the twins

It was awesome, we barely had time to think as we where so busy out and about

So as you can guess we've done the same for 2018, we can't wait now for xmas, a statement I never thought you would hear from anyone in this family

We flipped the finger to typical traditions and made our own, we made our own autieland Christmas and it was awesome