Dec 22 - Christmas Numero Cuatro

Raspberry Lindor Ball

"One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly."
  - Andy Rooney






  I had fruit for breakfast, a mostly ripe banana with a big handful of cherries.  Gub is loving the plentiful supply of summer fruit, mango, banana, cherries.  I checked my email and got a surprise present, a gift of Torchlight 2 from Mr Smart to my Steam account.  It looks good, an action RPG rather than straight first-person shooter.  Hopefully I will get some time to check it out and play it before the year runs out!
  Mr Smart arrived not long after breakfast, having firstly delivered his sister and her family safely to the airport.  He arrived to a furious mess of present wrapping and my desperately whipping up a Santa sack on the sewing machine.  I wanted it to hold the contents of my large self-assembled Aussie foods hamper, my gift to Gub and the Cambridge Rower.  All her favourites, things he must try if he's to be accepted as an adopted Aussie.  I don't think I've ever created something so cool in so little time.  I got it finished just in time.
  We packed the car and headed down do Bertie's, arriving just in time to take over care of our nephew so that she could nip out to the shops.  He had been a little grumpy all morning she informed us, but he went from grumpy to elated in 0.2 seconds of seeing his first present, a very dense and bouncy inflatable blue donkey.  He got the hang of it very quickly as you can see from the blur.  Soon the heavily festooned Christmas tree, decorated solo by said nephew, was floating in a sea of presents all waiting to be given.

Bounce Bounce Bounce Bounce

  Bertie returned and the give-fest commenced!  Mr Smart and I presented Gub and the Cambridge Rower with their Aussie hamper and they went through it with appropriately seasonal glee.  The Cambridge Rower tasted his first Tim Tam and was utterly delighted to find a bottle of AC/DC Highway to Hell Cabernet Sauvignon.  Neither he nor Gub knew that there were AC/DC wines, and Mr Smart and I didn't know how into AC/DC the Cambridge Rower was!  It was a truly serendipitous pick.

"What are Shapes?"

  There were many presents, wine, lollies, trinkets and Gub and the Cambridge Rower got me three CDs which I'd found next to impossible to get over here (Zaz, a French folk-pop musician, Rizzle Kicks, English hip-hop and Yael Naim, a French-Israeli folk musician) but the best present, the amazing sensational wrapping job, the forethought, the intrigue, the deception, goes to Mr Smart.  Remember I said, "It's a book, it has to be a book"? Well I wasn't wrong and here it is:

A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC by Jean Andrews

  That's right people, a whopping great textbook on computer maintenance.  I won't fib, it caught me off guard however it didn't actually seem out of place.  I'm forever asking Mr Smart, Earnest and Lord Koshington how to do things with my computer so in a lot of ways it would be a very handy reference.  I started to flick through the table of contents to see what it might help me learn.  I flicked through about five or six pages until I suddenly found out just how truly amazing, tricky and smart my Mr Smart can be.

Me realising yet again that Mr Smart always lives up to his name

  Yep, he sat there and glued together a squillion pages of an old university textbook from his IT days and hollowed it out to hide a kindle.  I have a kindle!!!  I have a kindle, and apparently the most wiley man on the planet.  Thank you Mr Smart!

Go Reds!

  If size of grin is anything to go by, Mr Smart's favourite present was the Liverpool FC calendar that Gub and the Cambridge Rower brought over from the UK but we both also received a couple of bottles of wine apiece.  I seem to be losing my non-drinker reputation at a frightening pace!
  My nephew was spoiled rotten of course, Lego, a fluffy great Stegosaurus (seriously Mum, do you realise how hard it is to wrap a Stegosaurus, their tails just will not behave!), a new Octonauts DVD and accompanying plush Kwazii toy. Unfortunately I did not spot a toy Gup-B in the ABC Shop or he'd have received that too!

A glorious mess indeed!

A Sunny Aussie 'Burbs Christmas

   After the unwrapping frenzy, Bertie set to building my nephew's new Lego garbage truck from his great-grandparents I believe.  I went off to carve up yet another ham (not sure how I managed to get the task two days in a row) and Gub and the Cambridge Rower enjoyed quietly celebrating his first ever summer Christmas by sipping their Pimms Punch on the deck in the sun and having a pre-lunch rest in the hammock.  Christmas and sharing new things with the one you love, is there anything better?
  Around the table we gathered and plentiful plates were filled.  It being Christmas, my nephew was informed by his mother that today only, he was allowed to have nothing but ham if he so chose.  He did.
  We shared laughter, bad jokes from crackers and an impromptu game of 'eat the lemon from your Pimms Punch'.  It produced a funny set of results for the sisters three.

Of course Bertie just found it amusing, she seems to be immune to lemon!

Snickety Snick, Kitchen Ninja!

  We brought out the Lego Creationary after main course and played a couple of rounds, a gift to the whole family from Gub and the Cambridge Rower.  We agreed it might play better once we work out some house rules but it passed the time until we felt like dessert.  Bertie had prepared a generous and varied fruit platter of cherries, mango, lychees in their knobbly skins, grapes and much more.  I heated the outside of my Icecream Christmas Pudding container until the pudding could be slipped out onto a chopping board and Bertie obliged with finding the bits and pieces of her electric knife.  It is much easier to cut with an electric knife as that doesn't smoosh it.  It was a big hit with the Cambridge Rower, though not to the point of needing seconds.
  Tricky, who has been working night shift lately poor thing, woke up in time for Pictionary, more gift giving and an extremely lengthy word game which we have since relegated to the 'banned from Christmas' list where it joins such family favourites as Monopoly, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit.  We can be rather competitive bunch sometimes.
  As the day turned to evening, Bertie cooked up some chicken wings and they joined the leftovers for dinner.  It ended up being a rather late night, I think we ambled in the door at about half past midnight and all immediately went to bed.

  Today's food included but probably wasn't limited to:

• Breakfast was a just unripe banana and a large handful of cherries.
• Nibblies were salted cashews and Sour Cream & Chive Pringles.
  
• Lunch was an entree of fresh natural oysters and king prawn cocktails washed down with an enormous glass of Pimms Punch, a main course of ham, broccoli salad, pesto pasta salad, a buttered bread roll and more Pimms Punch! followed by a dessert of fresh fruit and a generous slice of Icecream Christmas Pudding.
• Afternoon snack was more of the same!
  
• Dinner was more of the same again plus two chicken wings.
• Today's advent calendar Lindor Ball was raspberry.

  We had a great day and discovered the plus side of having Christmas early.  If you've forgotten something, the shops are still open!  No running out of anything for us.
  A very merry day with the people I hold most dear.
  Jess