Christmas Day

What a fantastic day, what a long day. It started early with William opening a few of his presents from Santa's stocking in our room. His 'Ho Ho Ho's changed to 'Wow Wow Wow's and just didn't stop. His smile and excitement was just so wonderful and genuine.
William would only open a single present at a time (though a good thing) and then go off and play with it, it has left plenty of gifts still wrapped under the tree for another day. We'll get back to those soon.
We had a couple of hours to cook puddings & desserts ready for our trip over the road to the neighbours for Christmas lunch. I can't remember how many dishes Lisa prepared but I cooked a lemon meringue using mum's old recipe. I couldn't wait for food now, and it didn't disappoint, we just ate and ate and ate even more.

Cranberry chutney on Brie on toast, or Oysters as a starter followed by the aussie traditional prawns and Moreton Bay bugs. The roast was followed by home made Irish Cream, more alcohol and then our puddings, and they were good even if I do say so myself.

We may have been exhausted and feeling like a lay down by late afternoon but William was still going for it like a little energiser bunny. The children were on overdrive and loving every minute.

I'm sure Lisa will have plenty more to write once she's sober.

The Christmas Street Party

Only two more sleeps till Christmas and we still have presents to wrap! It's been a busy party season, ending this week with our Christmas Street party. There was far too much food as normal, everything from rum balls to trifle and of course the traditional sausages on the barbie. William managed to keep up with the older kids, trying out their scooters and skateboards with alarming success and almost making it up the precariously placed jump ramp (eek!). The annual awards were presented - Andrew won the "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" prize for going out cycling in a storm when everyone else was running for cover. I won the Peter Brock Memorial prize for the fastest driving up the street (well we have got a big hill to get up!). It was a great night though, which saw William collapsing into bed at 9.30pm (closely followed by mummy and daddy!).
We're now undoubtedly full of festive spirit and wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year - we'll be seeing you on the webcam!

Weather

Its begining to feel at lot warmer now. Even though the temperature has dropped a little to the high 20's, the humidity is making it feel like living in a sauna. I think its going to be tough this Summer and the air conditioning's going to take a hammering as the Brisbane weather cycles back to normality; hot sticky days and storms in the afternoon that clear the air.

And this was just a little storm, 9000 lightening strikes in 2 hours and 25mm of rain in 30 minutes.

The Cleanup

This weekend has been spent still cleaning up the garden following the storm a couple of weeks ago. We've had more rain since, so the ground hasn't dried out much (neither has our artificial grass which now has weeds growing in it as its so full of soil!). It's been a boiling hot day today - William decided to go skinny-dipping at 7.30 this morning and we were all in by midday. The rest of our street has already got all their Christmas lights up, so we'll be following suit sometime this week - looking forward to William's reaction to the Christmas Tree!

More Post Storm Stuff

Its amazing how the day can change so dramatically over the period of a few hours. Here we are enjoying a fun afternoon by the pool under clear blue skies. Also, we'd almost finished painting and renovating this area; it was beginning to look half respectable.




And then a few hours later the sky turned green (yes, green). Its a sign of a potentially damaging hail storm and everyone puts their vehicles under any cover available. Then the storm started. The people in the know rated it as a Category 2 Cyclone. Unfortunately our beautiful back garden turned into a bed of mud and debris and suffered the most damage. By this time we'd also lost all power and phone lines.




Half an hour later we gathered with our friends from the street at the bottom of our drive discussing how bad the storm was and the carnage around us. A car was seen floating down the street, the dog park was destroyed but at least the kids were enjoying themselves.

Post Storms

The news of Brisbane's biggest storm in 30 years may not have reached the rest of the world, but we were hit pretty hard last Sunday afternoon. Cyclonic winds, rain and hail the size of golf balls battered down on the house and scared the hebegebes out us. The power was out, the phones were down and Niagra Falls appeared in our back garden.




Click here for the link to the local newspaper website showing some pictures taken around Brisbane following the storm.