Let it snow

Yesterday I looked at our upstairs Christmas Tree (yes, somehow we ended up with an upstairs tree and a downstairs tree) and thought, huh, that's lame, the stupid tree didn't even live long enough to make it through Christmas.  And then I realized that Christmas had already happened.  Oops.  I think I forgot it was Christmas because it just feels like summer vacation here. 

It certainly was a nice Christmas even though I seem to have forgotten about it.  Our friends Anita and Missy arrived to spend the holidays with us, and on Christmas Eve we took them down to Phillip Island to see the penguins.  We had a beautiful picnic on the beach for Christmas Eve dinner.  It was a bit strange sitting on the beach on a warm summer evening enjoying the sunset, and then realizing the following day was Christmas.

On Christmas Day we had lunch with our Aussie family.  It was very nice of them to invite us to join them and experience our first Aussie Christmas, especially since we brought our friends with us also.  There was a giant spread similar to what we are used to, but before we started eating we all popped crackers and shot confetti in the air.  Inside each cracker was a little plastic animal and a paper crown, which apparently we had to wear through lunch.  Karen really outdid herself with the Aussie desserts - pavlova, snot blocks (vanilla slices), match sticks, Christmas puddings...  we were absolutely stuffed.

After lunch we went home and ended up playing Risk.  Seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time to play a game of world domination on Christmas.  Apparently there are very distinct differences between how men and women inact world domination though and we quickly had to abbort the game before an actual war between the sexes began.  Fortunately w3e had enough wine and some dramatic weather to distract us.  The morning was beautiful, the afternoon warm and humid.  Then the rain, thunder, and lightening rolled in, and then the hail.  It was an interesting experience watching hail outside in the middle of summer on Christmas.  It didn't seem to add up.  But it certainly was a dramatic conclusion to a wonderful (and apparently forgetable?) Christmas Day.

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