Christmas: Blink and You'll Miss It

The silly season is done and dusted... 1000 rum balls have been consumed; nectarines, plums and cherries have been digested at rates fast enough to guarantee we all stay regular until well after New Years. I have personally eaten enough M and Ms, chocolate, mango smoothie, pavlova, trifle, ham and salad to last me a lifetime. And I have two big family functions coming up faster than I can say 'loosen that button please!'

Our Christmas Tree is still up and decorated. It will probably stay this way until school goes back. We have our house decorated. And it will stay decorated. Indefinitely. Several years ago, my mother bought us a fake Christmas tree, after I whinged and moaned about the ongoing clean up that a real tree necessitated. This is why I feel justified in keeping it up for about 3 months. The clean up is minimal. Eventually I will come to look at it as a giant pot plant. Only without the pot, or water, or soil.

This year we had Christmas at home. And the day began at 4:30am. We alternate Christmas between our families. My brother, sister and their partners joined us for three days of Christmas fun on the farm. We all squeezed into our little house, stocked up the cold room with drinks, fruit and meat, (in that order), and sat back by the pool and killed time. It was wonderful. And the weather was superb!

As far as tradition goes in our family, it's always about food. I ALWAYs glaze a ham.

Glazed Ham

We ALWAYS make a potato salad. We ALWAYS make a pavlova and trifle. We ALWAYS eat about 4kgs of prawns. SOOO GOOOD! So we did all those things. And we washed them down with a cool room full of alcohol - which we ALWAYS do. Daquiris, Mojitoes, Martinis and Cider were the beverages of choice this year. Mmmmmmm.

The children were over indulged again. Being the only children on both sides, they are spoiled terribly. And thankfully they are still buying my lies about the man in red. Or lady in red, as it actually is in our house. Santa Claus really outdid herself this year at our house! The lies get harder and harder.

"Sorry he got that swim suit size wrong girls... I'll email him and check his returns policy."
"I know the wrapping paper is the same as those presents from us over there... Santa must buy his paper from the same shop as us!"

Kids are so clever! (And now - two days later, also cranky and tired)...

Liv, out cold after the longest Christmas dinner wait, ever. It's all a bit much for little people.

The funny thing about Christmas this year was not having any parents in our house with us. Sometimes I felt like a child pretending to be a grown up. But more than anything, it made me realise that it's family that makes Christmas, 'CHRISTMAS' for me. It's the love, the laughter and the happiness I love. And the 'Christmas play' the kids put on. Yes, Sam is in a dress. Yes, Olivia bossed everyone around and told them what to do and say. Yes, Darcy is Lady Gaga. And not because Olivia told her to be... I love Christmas.

And now it's all said and done for another year. And I'll start the online shopping frenzy right after New Years. Only this year I'll have to hide my presents in better places. We had a few close calls this year...

What did you do for Christmas?

Is It Hot Enough For Ya?

It's Australia Day, and Mother Nature is slapping us in the face, with the best reminder possible that we live in this vast land down under, by hitting us with a whopping 40c+ day today. 10 minutes ago (at 7pm) I went outside and checked our thermometer, and it was still 38 degrees Celsius. Mother Nature likes to remind us who is the boss occasionally. And especially this January.

CP and I have just taken the kids out for a swim in our 'pool'. This is our pool.

If it looks like a gravel pit, that's because it is a gravel pit. It's not too bad actually. It's semi-clear (not so much now that we have been swimming in it). It's a fantastic temperature. And since it was originally used solely as a pit where gravel was extracted, the bottom of it (gravel) is significantly more 'safe' to me than a dam. Generally speaking, I like my 'pool gravel' to be cemented together, and the water to be filtered. But beggars can't be choosers. Especially when Mother Nature throws a curve ball at you like she did today.

Pools are an aspect of our lives that CP and I differ greatly on. I am a firm believer in putting one in now, so that we can gain maximum usage out of it now, while the kids are little. I think this comes from having grown up with a pool. CP on the other hand is not a pool fan. He calls them mosquito breeders. He sees dollar signs, time being eaten up, and more jobs for him (and he is probably right), but I still see far more positives. CP could happily spend the rest of his life not ever stepping foot in water other than to bathe. I just can't fathom that...

This is CP doing his best David Hasselhof impersonation. There's no reason for putting it on here, except that it makes me smile.

The real irony of today's heat wave, is that we are in the midst of the worst flood in recorded history (for this district anyway). We are literally cut off from any of the three surrounding towns, by water so deep that it is not safe to drive a 4 wheel drive through. It is slow moving water, and because the rivers around us have been taking it in turns with their peaks and drops, this has left us isolated for almost four weeks, with another three to go. At least. There has been the odd day where we've made a break when the water is low enough to restock our supplies, but for the most part we have been stuck.

This is actually taken in last year's flood. But there is water (exactly the same) there again. This also isn't us driving. We aren't crazy enough to do that, but this pic shows the kind of water cutting us off. The water is deep like this for kilometres.

The crazy thing about this flood is that it's almost drought weather. One of my friends laughed about how she was watering her garden using the flood water that was metres from her back fence, because it was so dry wherever the water hadn't reached. If that isn't irony, I don't know what is. This is what happens when you don't get the rain that causes a flood, but rather, you get the floodwaters that start up north and meander down a river system that will ultimately affect you. Slow moving water. And it's just that.
Sss... llllll..................ooooooowwwwwww.......

So here I am, in the air conditioned comfort of my bedroom. I'm lamenting the death of my lounge room air conditioner.And how it will be weeks before anyone will be able to make it to our house to fix it. Thank goodness we had the common sense to put air conditioning in every room. I'm sure that many hardened country locals would think I am 'soft'. I like to think I am a true believer in putting modern technology to use. It's there. I use it. Easy. I'm not going to sit around talking about 'the old days' when it's currently 'the new days'... I am thinking about how grateful I am not to have my butt sticking to the leather of a chair and giving me third degree burns. Or how lovely it is in my room not breathing in that THICK hot air that clogs your throat. You can only imagine how horrid it feels if you have experienced it first hand. Or if you've ever stepped off a plane from Europe in the winter, into an Australian summer. It's like a big hot smack to the head.

It's hot, dry, and if I didn't know better, only a few months away from even more droughty weather. You'd never know it flying overhead though. A massive sea of inland water.

I guess if you choose to live out here, it's part of the package. I don't mind it so much anymore. As long as my survival technology keeps working. (Ie: fridges, air con and internet). And actually, with the exception of yesterday and today, Mother Nature has been considerably kind with the summer temperatures. We have had a glorious summer. If you don't count all the flood water. But nothing like Mother Nature to bring everything home and remind you of how tiny you are in the grand scheme of things.

Here's to fantastic weather for the rest of 2011. Whatever that may be...