Christmas

Started with a Christmas tree and two santa sacks:

Lucky while O/S a little forward planning kicked in - this bauble is courtesy of the Ufizzi Gallery

and Buckingham Palace:

and Domayne at Alexandria - but hey - it's as close to Paris as I could get for now :)

And so the scene was set. We had made our gingerbread house, baked our Christmas cake and steamed our Christmas puddings. On Christmas Eve the kids participated in the children's pageant:

Kit was a shepherd and Hannah an angel:

After mass we went to our friends' annual Christmas Eve do...always a pleasure. Then home - the kids to bed and Phil and I to do the last of the wrapping etc and share a glass of wine together...before the madness of Christmas morning. This year Dad was not with us. It was the first time I can recall of waking up with just the 4 of us together - the twin's first christmas doesn't count cos we were all in hospital and Kit and I were in a quarantined room a couple of doors down from Phil and Hannah. It was also the first of the three years we have had Christmas Day lunch at our place that in the midst of cooking and getting ready for the extended family to come over that i haven't madly hustled everyone out the door to go to morning mass...overall I have to say - that extra time at home made a significant difference to my stress levels.

I couldn't resist buying Kit this copy of Gallileo's temperature gauge

And we got Hannah yet another outfit

After lunch and presents, the kids all did some drawing then it was a lovely hot day so they ran about under the sprinkler before dessert.

Santa was pretty good to me too - I got The Diamond Queen - an autobiography of Queen Elizabeth as well as another great holiday read: Death at Pemberley which I am reading at the moment. Another fave gift I got was from my sister:

Under The Pepperina Tree is a memoir of 2 friends growing up in country QLD during the 1950s. These women - Brenda and Rosalie were friends with my Mum and Brenda includes some lovely anecdotes about Mum, my grandmother (Esmay) and my Aunty Leslie (Sissy). It is a treasure that I look forward to sharing with the twins when they are older.

Boxing day is one of my favourite days all year. I even like the tv being on with the cricket - it is all part of the ambience. This year we had to take Kit to the park - his first bike without training wheels was a huge success. When discussing which one he should get for Christmas (from Santa) Phil and I were worried that as he hadn't ridden his little one for months that perhaps getting one with gears would be too much...but on the other hand - would last him longer... and the bike Phil liked best wasn't the cheapest...anyways... within half an hour - he was riding it. No training wheels, he even used the gears a little bit. It is a fantastic bike. Specially designed with kids centre of gravity in mind... ByK - kids bikes (http://www.bykbikes.com/). I am keen to see how Hannah goes on one - maybe next Christmas. At the moment she can pedal her bike with training wheels around the table out on our back deck. She loves riding it but does tire a bit. She also quite likes her scooter so I think we'll really push her on those with the view to trying her on one of these types of ByKs in the future. She's got the riding outfit ready to go: