A Whole Year Today and Christmas

Beleive it or not it has been a whole year today since I started blogging. Where has this year gone. I want to thank all you beautiful people who have come and visited my blog and left me such encouraging and caring comments. It is funny how you forget little things, and this has been a great way to remember and keep a recored of the different events and things that have happened in our lives during the past 12 months. Looking forward to continuing it again this year.

I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas Day, and that you stopped to remember the birth of a Saviour. Ours was a lovely day and therefore I have lots of photos to share (more for my future reference). Both Colin and Sarah slept over at Pete's also so we all woke up together Christmas morning, We each opened a present before Breakfast - had a quick breakfast of and then all went to church. Our big kids got to "Citipointe" church in Mansfield and they had a wonderful service - the focus being on "The Perfect Gift". how God gave his very best gift to us in HIS SON JESUS. What gifts are we going to bring to God. - our worship, our service - and we some sang beautiful Christmas Carols, just walked away being in awe of all God has done for us this wonderful day, and the cost of his gift to us. It was pretty awesome too being in a service with so many others praising God. I reckon there were probably close to a 1000 (the church was pretty packed out) at the service on Christmas morning.

We came home and put the turkey in the oven and set the table for lunch, and then had our gift giving. Now this always takes some time in our house, as Steve hands one gift out at a time, we all wait until that person opens their gift and share with them the joy of receiving before the next gift is handed out. It gives us all a chance to appreciate the thoughtfulness of each other, and allows us to really thank each other too. My Mum and Dad arrived in the middle of our gift giving and were able to join us also. This pretty much took up the rest of the morning.

Then the girls hit the kitchen to cook the roast vegetables whilst the men carved the meat. I had prepared and peeled all the vegetables on Christmas Eve and also made the Cauliflower au gratin, so it only needed was to go in the oven and the vegetables on the stove to cook. My sister and her husband, family and Mother in law all arrived close to 1pm, we sat down to lunch at 1.45pm. Normally we would make our own Christmas bon bons and have verses of scripture in them so that between us all we can read the Christmas story around the dinner table. I did not have time to make them this year, so Sarah and I bought Candy Canes, and we typed out the real story of the Candy Cane that Katrina shared with us on SofF, and everyone received one of these, and Steve then read the story before we started our meal.

Steve got an X-Box 360 Elite and a heap of games (the excuse being that we can use it as a Entertainment and Media Console- not just for game playing) and my neices and nephew got a Playstation, with these guitars that you play to try and match the patterns of the music. (Can't quite remember what it was called - just knew they had a ton of fun on them) Most of us had a go and we all had a ton of fun playing this during the afternoon whilst a couple of others had nice big sleep.

All the games that Steve got for his X-box were four person player games, so in the evening we all had a go at some of the family games that he received. Sarah got a DVD for Christmas so we all ended up watching it at the end of the evening.

Chloe and I both got new cameras for Christmas so we had a great time taking photos throughout the day, Pete scored a Bar-B-Que and there was talk of a Bar-B-que dinner, but we were all too full from lunch to attempt to eat much dinner (just had pickings from lunch and fruit) Colin got CD's, music DVD's and a new piece of equipment that will allow him to play around with recordings, He was pretty stoked. Sarah received all things cupcakes, and vouchers so that she could shop yesterday. Sarah has a passion for shopping. I love this time of year, I love that we can celebrate the birth of Christ and that we can get together as family and enjoy each other also.

Yesterday we hit the shops for the Boxing day sales. I have never been to a city sale before, and I don't think I am in a hurry to do it again, The bargains were fantasic, but you had to queue for ages just to purchase the item. We queued in Myers for 45 minutes just to buy shoes, The queues in Jay's Jays were all around the store and out the front - unreal (consequently we didn't think the bargains were good enough to warrent the queue to pay for them). There were crowds everywhere and parking was a bit of a nightmare. Think I would much prefer shopping in the country to the city. I still did enjoy the company of my girls and it was fun to see them get a thrill out of the bargains they managed to get.

Just had to share this photo of Steve with his new fishing cap. He received this from a friend in Rocky who knew how appropriate this cap would be for Steve. He loves it, considering he loves fishing.

We are having an easy day here today - a bit of cleaning, a bit of baking (cupcakes of course) and a bit of relaxing. Might get to read one of my new books. Great day for relaxing, it is cool, and overcast - good staying indoors weather.

Not long to go now until the New Year ........bring it on.