Three days of Christmas

For the last three days, we have celebrated much, ate much and enjoyed family.

On Christmas morning the kids got up at 5.30 to sneak a peek at their pressies from Santa - even checking out Jonty's and then put everything back in the sacks, while they waited for Simon me and Jonty to get up.

At 11am the family arrived and the crazy fun began again.

It wasn't all crazy though - Collette came up with a new family tradition that we write on a piece of paper, a gift we would like to give to Jesus during 2011 and we put it in a special box and put it under the tree as our gift to him. Just something we would like to work on in our lives this coming year to show him that we love him and to show the kids we love him more than Santa ;)

Simon had to work ( it's sad that people need the police on Christmas Day but that's the reality of it) but it was great that he could pop in (there's some advantages to living next door to work) when it was quiet and enjoy some lunch with us.

I prayed and hoped that the day would be nice and sunny because there's no way we could fit 16 people in our little house, and it turned out to be beautiful, not too hot and no wind, and so we were able to eat out on the deck. (I really hope the police department don't mind that we built a deck at one of their houses because it has been the best thing ever!!!)

It was lovely having Jess, Kyle and Bastian down this year to celebrate with us.

That night we put a tent up outside and Simon and the kids slept out there, Jess and Kyle took our room and Mum, me and Collette took the kids' bunks. You should have seen Mum trying to climb up onto the top bunk. Sarra doesn't have a ladder, she just jumps up but of course Mum couldn't manage that - it was hilarious!!

We tried to get some nice shots of all the grandkids..... yeah that worked!!

The next day on Boxing Day was of course Sarra's 10th birthday. She was only 7 days overdue and very considerately left Christmas Day for me to enjoy and came along on Boxing Day, after a 12 hour labour. She set the pace and all the kids since, have been overdue, so don't hold your breath for April 3rd.

I got Collette for Christmas, the game, Guesstures. We were first introduced to it when we went to Melbourne earlier this year. The best ever player is Kyle's Dad, Bobby Andrews, he always cracks us up and it is a given that whenever we go to their place we HAVE to play. You pick 4 cards out and have a set time-limit within which to act out the words for your team to guess. So after Sarra's birthday tea, we played it and laughed and played some more and laughed!!

Simon helped Oliver act out his words.

The little ones weren't all that interested and just did their own thing. Jonty loved Bastian and kept giving him cuddles and showing him his baby doll. (one of Sarra's old ones)

Today, being day three of our celebrations, we went to Dad's house to celebrate Christmas Day with him. The kids love going there and riding on the back of his 4-wheeler and running around outside.

And Dad's new water wheel that he built was a new hit. The kids played around it in the mud for hours and hours.

Now there's only one more Christmas Day to go, Christmas with the Triffitt's on New Year's Day this weekend.