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Published: January 8th 2009
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Lighting up the neighbourhood
I wonder what would happen if he moved house? Merry christmas and a happy new year to everyone reading this. As the christmas period draws to a close I thought we had better update you all on what we have been getting up to following on from the last blog.
The festive spirit started on christmas eve when we went in convoy with Anne, John, Aaron, Ben, Andrew, Marian, Jack, Laura, Graham, Tracey, Robbie and Abby to look at some christmas lights unlike any we had ever seen before. I had thought that the lights of Stephanie's next door neighbour were pretty over the top but this house took every prize for being over dressed with christmas decorations! The owner does his house up every year for charity and a Perth-wide competition for christmas displays (he won it this year). The lights were all over the outside of the house with various lit up figures on the lawn and rope lights embedded in the border of his paths as well as having christmas ferris wheels and singing/dancing santas, etc. You could then walk through his garage where he had set up more festive displays rigged up to various activation devices such as hand-clap sensors and old telephone handsets that
you had to lift up to create the circuit. When we got there it took us about 5 minutes to get inside as we had gone just as it had begun to get dark. As we left the queue was massive with people in their pyjamas waiting to see it all. It certainly made us feel christmasy! We went back to the house where we made final preparations for the following day (clearing a path for santa, etc.) and then welcomed in christmas day with a glass of wine out in the garden.
Christmas day itself started bright and early with Ben rousing the house to let us know that Santa had been and left some presents. Luckily he had only woken Anne and John when he first got up at 4.15 for a visit to the bathroom and to 'check whether Santa had been"! It was now just after 7 and we were up and giving out presents as well as unwrapping our own while the boys tore into theirs. Their main present was a Nintendo Wii but they also got loads more including fishing rods, the "best football in the world", goalie gloves, space hopper type toys,
At the front of the queue
...which was now snaking halfway up the street! bakugan (new pokemon type toy), colouring books, pooing penguins, books to name but a few. Stephanie got me some much needed stuff for travel as well as some much missed sweets from back home in the form of double deckers and fruit gums! After a quick game on the wii we headed down to Mullaloo beach to soak up the atmosphere. Loads of families head down for a christmas lunch in the sunshine and a dip in the sea, lots of families who have emigrated here from the uk bring flags so there were quite few st andrews and st georges crosses and some irish flags aswell. The wind was very string which kept the temperature down and the flies away which was great for our seafood lunch that Andrew and Marian had prepared but not so great for swimming as it was a wee bit too chilly (27ish degrees!) we stayed down at the beach for a couple of hours playing with the kids and some of their new toys and some random children from families sitting nearby. In the evening the Barnes family came over to Aunty Annes having surgically removed jack from guitar hero! We had a
Christmas Day Aussie Style
You wouldn't do this in the UK! lovely turkey dinner in the garden and some white chocolate mud cake that paul and i made. We then played the Wii til way past when the boys had gone to bed, although they hadn't gone without drama! The boys can be quite competitive and that teamed with tiredness meant Ben didn't want to go to bed til he had won, so he was allowed one more game against his cousin Laura who had sworn to let him win! I guess it was bound to happen, Laura accidentally beat him at boxing and he nearly bawled the house down before he had to go to bed 😞 normally ben is quite chilled about not winning so we figured it was mostly due to tiredness and the wii is now banned just before bedtime! The adults the stayed up racing on MarioKart until it was time for the Barnes to return Jack to guitar hero.
On Boxing day paul and I headed south a bit to Cohunu Wildlife park where I got to hold a Koala and pose for pictures. The koala lady was very chatty and paul got to pat one on the sly when the admissions lady wasn't
looking! We also fed the wallabies and the Kangaroos and saw some reindeer, some emu and some talking parrots who coudl say 'hello darling' and stuck one leg out of their cage as if to shake your hand. We then went to the cinema to see The Day the Earth Stood Still and then had a swim in the Indian Ocean as it was a bit toastier than christmas day.
The next week was quite chilled out I had a few shifts at work so was just working away making pennies. We had been invited out with some friends for New Years or to a Pool party at Vanessa's but we were both feeling a bit homesick and just wanted to chill out and have a nice evening to ourselves. So we hired the Black Knight on DVD and made a nice homemade pizza for dinner and chilled out in the aircon. The hinshies arrived home about 10 o'clock as Vanessa's party had finished early, she was feeling a bit homesick as her parents had just left to go back to the UK and she had a migraine, so the boys got lemonade in a flute glass and Aunty
Anne told them it was champagne, they were over the moon! Paul and I had bought party poppers so we all had our bubbly and poppers and celebrated in the garden. After the boys went to bed we stayed up chatting and sipping bubbles until it was time for the bells. Once we had toasted the new year we all had a wee chat on the webcam to people back home before hitting the 2009 hay.
The whole christmas period has been a bit strange and has felt a bit surreal, in fact at some points it hasn't felt like christmas at all. Hope everyone has had a great time over christmas and new year and we look forward to seeing you all soon(ish).
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