Our First Australian Christmas

We made it through our first Australian Christmas and I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I was having a hard time getting into the spirit initially but the weekend ended up being really nice. The festivities started with the live nativity in downtown Perth which was really awesome complete with real camels carrying the wise men. Brayden particularly enjoyed it and it was amazing for me to watch him see the Christmas story come to life before his eyes and be able to really understand the true meaning of Christmas.

Christmas Eve morning started off with a skype visit with Greg, Amanda and the kids and we had an early presents opening time with them. Although we couldn't be together it was still really nice to watch them open our gifts to them and vice versa. Gotta love skype. Then we hit beach for a couple of hours followed by a Christmas Eve party at our place with many of our new friends down here. Christmas Eve was spent assembling a 8ft trampoline for Santa which I am happy to say only took a couple of hours. (we had heard horror stories about how long it takes)

Christmas Day was just lovely although very HOT. It was our first Christmas morning with just the 4 of us and it was actually really nice. I have never had a Christmas morning without either grandparents, brother, sister...etc...and I expected it to be lonely and really be missing home, but I have to say spending the morning with just my 3 boys was nice. Of course now that the kids are both old enough to get it there was excitement and tearing of paper... was great family time. Then we got to skype with Mom, Dad, Lys, Grandma C, Matt, Jen and Ewan! The boys had fun showing all of their new presents to the Mittlers and it was great that they were still able to be a part of our morning. We then went over to a friends house for Christmas dinner (lunch) and thankfully they have a pool because it was close to 40c. We ate in the air conditioned house and spent the afternoon having cold drinks in the pool.

Boxing Day we hit the golf course as Brayden was eager to try out his new clubs we got him for Christmas. We brought some plastic clubs and a ball for Dylan and all four of us went out there for a round. It was another hot day but as luck would have it there is a local pool right next to the golf course and so we spent the afternoon playing in the water to cool down. That night we figured we needed to complete the holidays with seafood on the BBQ for dinner and it was delicious. So all in all I think we have this Australian Christmas thing figured out. We do however still want the kids to remember snow and winter so the evening was spent watching the Mighty Ducks movie. Yes I realize this is an American movie set in Minnesota, but they are playing hockey, there is snow and the main character kid is Joshua Jackson who is Canadian so hey..it works.

I hope everyone had as great of a Christmas as we did. I will post pics as soon as they are downloaded from the camera.

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas...NOT

I have been trying very hard to get into the Christmas spirit this year. House is decorated, tree is up, took the kids to see Santa and we have been listening to lots Christmas music in the car and watching classics like Frosty and Rudolph...but I still am not feeling it. The weather is hot, the malls are air conditioned, kids are out of school on summer holidays and because it stays light later into the evening you don't get to see many Christmas lights on houses...not that there are many to see anyway. I really do not miss the snow and cold but it is the one time of year when I find it tolerable. There is just something about seeing Christmas lights reflecting off the snow...building snowmen with the kids on the front lawn...going for a hay ride and then having hot chocolate and warming up in front of the fireplace. We have many Christmas activities this week so hopefully those will help...Gingerbread house making with the Canadian Club, live Nativity downtown with real animals, neighbourhood Christmas BBQ and then we are hosting a Christmas Eve party. We are also planning a nice Christmas dinner with our friends and then a swim in their pool followed by hitting the beach to watch the sunset. We might as well embrace the change right? Lets just say the song "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" has a whole new meaning to me this year.