Last Night

with our English rellies yesterday. I had too much wine to post, and woke up looking a little like P5's scary potato person. Going to miss them lots :(

Worst Christmas Cracker Present In The World?

What is that?

 L8 was in hysterics over the idea that the day someone designed that at work, his boss totally fired his butt.

Cuzzies

Building memories together.

Ahhhhh. . .

the lazy Boxing Day. Fabulous. I love the tramp. I've totally worked out how to take the exercise out of the trampoline. Gaze at the sky. Add a canopy, books and pillows. It's fantastic. 

 Some people though. . . 

 just wanna bounce. 

Only one twisted ankle so far. Not bad going. 

Christmas Lights

With oohs and aaaahs.

I really need to learn how to chose MP3 files to put on videos so I can stop using the cheesy five or so that come with the camera software. I promise I'll suss that before I subject you ever again.

Hape Krpo.

All Across The Land. . .

A blueberry muffin, a sante bar (sounds appropriate) and a glass of water for Father Christmas, and a couple of bowls of water for the reindeers.

The five-year-old wrote the note, but the eight-year-old did sign it, without correcting the grammar even. I'm calling that Christmas spirit.

Yet Another Fabulous Thing About Keeping Chickens For Pets

#A ready supply of feather quill pens

These Things I Loved Today

even though I was a bit of a grumpy old hag.

*P5 finishing reading herself Pippi Longstocking

 (wearing appropriate footwear of course)

 *going for a quick forage for garden bounty (one of my tomato plants gave way under the strain of last week's rain, but I'm hoping I can still ripen some of the fruit)

 *watching impromptu ballet shows

 *a handsome boy coming home from my lovely friend's place (thank you thank you thank you - can you believe someone who has five children, is pregnant, and already has other children coming to play, would offer to have your child for the afternoon? That's legendary friendship that is!) and getting keen to cook dinner for us

Bush

Caught up with our Anglo-rellies and went for a walk in the local bush.

Geeky Husband was in charge of the photos, so you have to imagine in the people . . .

No mistaking the New Zealand glarish sun though.

Red Giving

Geeky Husband and I decided to start a new Christmas tradition of giving blood. We took L&P with us and I did my madwoman impression by giving L8 the camera to blog it. Being a ditzy kind of mother, I forgot to put the memory card in it. Doh. 

Luckily P5 grizzled about being left out so I gave her Geeky Husband's work iphone to take pics on, which he wasn't terribly impressed with, but of course it did save the blog. P5 took about a million photos, but somehow most of them were actually short video clips.

She did capture me nervous:

 the iron test (I think she thought that was the whole deal for a while):

 the action:

 and the cute blood shaking machine:

 But clearly for her the most interesting part of the whole visit was the jar of candy canes:

 candy canes:

 CANDY CANES:

It's lucky she took lots of that and none of Geeky Husband fainting afterwards, 'cos that might make him look a bit soft eh? Heh.

Who Could Resist?

Why don't they make shoes with lights for grown ups? It was a ridiculous whim, but I'm calling it an early Christmas prezzie.



Also my children got their reports and I'm happy to say they both rock. Nice to have that objectively affirmed.

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Last night I blearily registered the classic thump of a car crash. Having grown up on a busy road with a bend in it, I'm afraid to admit I'm a bit immune to the bump, and it failed to rouse me enough to brave the wet dark of 2am. A few minutes later, however, there was that scariest of nighttime sounds - someone tapping on the bedroom window. . .

 When you are a teen or a young twenty-something, a tap on the window can be the start of something exciting and fun, but when you are middle-aged, there can be no good coming from a tap on the window. I freaked a bit, but at least I got up to scowl menacingly at whoever needed my attention but didn't want to knock on the door like any normal night-time intruder. Geeky Husband couldn't even make it out of bed, and satisfied himself with some incoherent mumblings. On (bravely!) opening the door I found my next door neighbour asking if we had friends here who had parked outside? Nope, but it had given me sufficient adrenaline to go and see what his problem was.

It was quite a big one:

I thought that car was a hatchback, but no, it used to be a sedan. Thoroughly squished eh?

I don't think anyone was hurt (that one was actually parked when it was hit) but the fence we fixed and painted [the front of anyway!] not long ago is looking kind of the worse for wear:

Bags not fix that.

Four Cuzzies

They all get on just fine, which is lovely to see. However, getting them to all pose with fond smiles at the same time, is a bit of a mission. 

Take One - 1 out of 4

 Take Two - 0 out of 4

 Take Three - 3 out of 4

Admittedly I was making them smile right into the harsh sun, and the poor wee things had not one but three parents madly pointing digital devices at them, so I guess that's close enough.

Reunited

if painfully out of focus. That looked like focus after a few wines. Geeky Husband's Geeky Bro is over from the UK. Awww. . . happy Christmassy times.

Loving Flo

My Oven Is Broken

and one of my children demanded to know if you can choose to have a baby or not, and if so, how?  I don't have a picture for that, apart from the wine and choccie that got me through.

So much for being good. (There was LOTS more choccie too.)

Yes, Another Novel

Have to share P5's latest book. She wrote this one over a few bedtimes, all by herself before lights out each night. It's named after one of her school friends, Taylor The Sweet Fairy.

 The back cover  shows that this is part of the Yummy Fairies books, and has a brief and enticing synopsis:

If you've ever read any of the four billion Rainbow Fairies books, you'll know she's pretty much sussed the formula already. 

Pretty

Christmas Tree Day

Survived the annual decorating trial. We seem to have a reeeeally teeny tree this year, even though it was just as expensive as all the other years. I almost did the unthinkable, and went fake, just because I saw the most fabulous RED tree (it also came in BLUE and L8 was desperate for one) but on checking it out they wanted $299 for it and *ahem* much as I like Christmas, I don't like it enough to eat baked beans for the foreseeable future, so no red tree for us.

I'm clearly not a very sentimental mummy because I did take the opportunity to throw one of the decorations L8 made at school years ago into the bin. Sadly though, he spotted it in there, told me I was the meanest mummy ever, retrieved it and hung it in pride of place, right in the middle of the tree. Hmmm. I have already hidden it again within the depths of the tree this time. It's really kinda tragic, rather than festive:

I guess that's what kids are supposed to do at Christmas though - torment their mothers with aesthetically-challenged decorations. I remember my sister and I insisting a blue-haired gnome was the baby Jesus and our Christmas fairy had to hold him. Now it's my turn, and L8 is tormenting me with a blue plastic whale. First he popped it on top of the tree:

and now we've come to a truce with it perched happily as the angel's blue whale-like hat.

Sigh. A new tradition. Joyous.

Goodwill And All That

This may look like a picture of our gorgeous bougainvillea, but it's actually of the boys, hard at work next door. I organized for them to go and clear our 80 year old neighbour's garden, which we noticed was suddenly waist high. If it's left through a NZ summer it's going to be almost impossible to get on top of. Actually, it was already pretty hard. However, it's really easy to be full of seasonal goodwill for your neighbours when you don't actually have to do the grunt work. 

They did spend most of the time over there accepting his hospitality for a beer, a lemonade and a chat. I suspect that chat was even more welcomed than the garden work.

After I volunteered them, I decided I'd better spend the time cooking up something yum so they weren't mad at me, so P5 and I got to work on peppermint bark. This is just to make you drool - white chocolate, crushed candy canes (used in place of the peppermints which we couldn't find, being in the wrong country and all), more chocolate, thickened cream, and mmmmm. . . 

I'm hoping a couple will do for teacher Christmas gifts once we pretty up the jars. If we can resist scoffing that is . . .