Seasons Greeting

Winter break is almost over but as we were winding up for Christmas the kids dance all had watching days.

These are from the tap class that Liam and Madeline were in together.

The last week had the school Christmas concert, Liam's ballet watching day and lots of snow (by Victoria standards anyway).  

richard (with a small amount of assistance) made a snow fort in the front yard so he and the kids had hot chocolates and buttered toast in it.

Liam and Richard went to a Salmon Kings game and the girls and I went to a friends Yule party and it snowed about 10cm while they were at the game. The roof of the fort colasped from the weight by the morning. 

The kids and I had a couple of days to finish christmas preparations including the annual Santa photo, Izabel wasn't keen on the big man so I'm in this years pic too. 

We had trouble getting children to sleep on Christmas eve rather than anyone waking up to early so the day started in a fairly civilied manner with stockings at about 8.30.  We followed that with Eggs benidict, 

home made hollindaise and all. Then presents, present construction and "lunch" at about 4.30.

From 2008 12 25

All of us have had colds over the break and Izabel still has a nasty cough so there haven't been a lot of outings but we have managed a couple of sledding sessions at Beacon Hill park and some bike rides. 

Today Richard, Liam and Madeline saw a movie and I did some sewing. 

Xmas Present

We had second great Christmas celebration. The plan was for presents and a BBQ, which all occurred. The weather was not favouring us so the sitting outside was not pleasant, and so abandonned, and the backyard cricket was cut short, many rain delays. Still everyone seemed to have a good time and we enjoyed being with everyone.

Christmas in Wainuiomata

So click the picture and you'll see what I managed to capture.

So this was how Xmas happened

I know, its the end of January and Im finally writting about Christmas ! It was buzy! We had all our travellers arrive from their far flung residences with various amounts of complication. It seemed simplier to arrive from NZ rather than Canada.
Christmas Eve involved baking cookies at a friends place, and icing them which the children had a lot of fun with. Pierre created a feast involving Teriyaki pork and chicken after which we all went to Canyon Road for the Farolitto walk. We had hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows on a bonfire one of the places had. We returned home and some of us went to the neighbourhood party, a bonfire down the road.
Christmas day dawned with stockings for the kids, we had Breakfast then presents as we had others coming to join us fo lunch. The menu was prawn cocktails, raspberry glazed ham, stuffed turkey breast, passole and beans followed by christmas pudding. Passole is a New Mexican dish, a special type of corn is boiled with pork and green chilli is added, its very tasty.