Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I hope that everyone had a great Christmas. I have to say I really enjoyed mine and the kids had a great time. For some reason Blogger is putting in a weird symbol whenever I use a quotation mark or apostraphe, so I apologize but I don't have time to fix them all. FYI.

On Christmas Eve, we had church at 1pm. I prepped the turkey I had to cook for dinner that night and looked over the talk I was assigned for church. At 9 am I decided to completely throw it out and change it! I am not sure why I decided to do this and how I actually pulled it off... but I felt good about it and was happy with the result. I felt like I had to make it more Christmas oriented, which I had previously felt would be hard with the topic "Choose this day whom you will serve" but in the end it worked. We came home at 2:30 and started making the big dinner since it was at my house. Jared's parents and sister (and her family) came over about 3pm or so and we all worked together to make it. Katherine did a nice table setting with pretty gold decorations, Christmas crackers (a must), and small treat bags for everyone. Mum made Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes and gravy. I did the turkey, peas, pumpkin (squash) and stuffing. We had non-alcoholic bubbly as well. Everything turned out really nice.



After dinner we sang Happy Birthday to Austin (who had already opened all his gifts during the week) and then we opened up gifts the cousins had exchanged- with Katherine's kids and with Lauren's kids (who lives in Melbourne). We had dessert and hung out a while before everyone went home. That night we read the Christmas story with the kids and finished our advent calendar. We had the kids act out the story using the felt Christmas puppets that Kaylyn made for us two years ago (thanks Kaylyn!). The kids went to bed and we got out our tools and started putting things together and stuffing stockings.



Christmas day the kids didn't even wake us up! Since the sun comes up before 5am here during the summer, it was clear and bright quite early. They got up about 6:30 and said "Santa's been here!" Austin's big gifts were a car racetrack and a Razor scooter. Olivia got a Dora boogie board, a shopping cart, and a Razor Junior scooter. They were both ecstatic! We also got them a big inflated pool for the backyard and various other gifts.

Jared picked up the missionaries about 8 am and we had a big breakfast of pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and juice. The American one called his family, with our help, and they stayed until about 11 am. We had the 2nd turkey in the oven and went over to Mike and Debbie's house (Jared’s cousin who lives on the same street as us) about 1pm. I felt like an old pro by the time I did my second turkey! We had another nice dinner there and the kids swam a little bit. Here is a photo of Kerry (Jared’s other cousin, Richard’s, wife), Mike, and Mike’s father in law from England. (not sure what Mike's fish shirt was about that day. Interesting.)




After that we went to Dave and Monica’s, Jared’s aunt and uncle, where everyone had just finished dinner and were opening presents. We wished everyone a Merry Christmas then went home quite exhausted.

Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, is always a big day to go to the beach. Everyone had gone down to Katherine’s house on Christmas night to sleep over, but we opted to go home. I just couldn’t bear the thought of packing up all our stuff and trying to get kids to sleep, etc. Plus Katherine had a house FULL of people already so it would be hard to fit us in (though they were happy to do so if we wanted). So we went down that morning about 9am, but unfortunately the weather was bleak. It was cold and a little rainy. Here are some of the older folks doing a crossword puzzle at the table.



The kids ended up going in the pool and all the guys went down to the beach but us ladies all stayed in. I couldn’t believe that we were wearing jeans and some even long sleeves… I did feel glad to NOT be sweating my brains out, as I thought I would be at this time of year, however I had gotten used to the idea of swimming at Christmas so I was somewhat disappointed. It was a weird feeling.

Anyway, later all the girls went to see “The Holiday” which was great, for me, but some of the husbands made a big stink about it. I could do a whole post just on that topic, b/c it really gets me going, but I will save it for another time. Suffice to say, I felt REALLY grateful to have a husband who was happy to allow me 3 hours to have a break and see a movie and NOT give me a total guilt trip about it. I don’t see what the big deal is, but it was quite a soap opera. Thank you Jared, I really appreciate you.



Since then, we have been shopping at the good sales, swimming at Mike and Debbie’s house (who are out of town), went to IKEA, went to the beach, looked at bikes for Jared, etc. Today Jared got to speak in church, which he did very well. He is a really good speaker, in my opinion, always telling good stories and relating it back to the topic. I love hearing him speak or teach. Tonight we are going over to a nearby shopping center for a little family New Year’s Eve. There is a big lake in the back with grassy areas, pavillions and fountains, etc. They are having fireworks at 9pm and other things for the kids. Then we’ll go over to Monica and Dave’s with everyone to ‘ring in the new year’.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!