CHRISTMAS DAY 2014..

It was a different Christmas this year....
We were down to three of us at home.... first time ever.
Chloe decided that we needed to change it to make it special, so we were invited to her place for Christmas this year..
It started with us having a sleepover on Christmas Eve so that we were all able to open Santa presents together....
This year Christmas was made special by Danielle (Chloe's flatmate) joining us for Christmas also...
Danielle loves Christmas, and we so enjoyed having her spend the day with us.

It was close on Midnight when we got to bed.  Steve and I were both pretty tired, we have had a couple of very busy weeks.... The girls woke at 5.30am.  I could hear them giggling in the lounge....
They were good and left it until 6am to wake us.... Even then it was a little difficult waking Steve.

We had lots of fun opening our Santa Presents.  A new experience for Danielle as her family were never really big on Christmas....

The girls open a present each first.....

They must have been good girls this year because their stockings were full.

Steve sent next...

 It was a lot of fun... the girls had filled our stockings as well so we also had presents to open...

Santa Dan left a present for Chloe....

 Chloe's boyfriend Dan had bought her a lovely dress to wear on Christmas day.  So that she could wear it to church with him,  it was left at her place under the Christmas tree with a card saying it was from Santa....

A very Happy Steve

 Steve was pretty thrilled to receive a new reel for his fishing from Santa.  Think he had a little input into this gift...

both girls scored jewellery from Santa...

Still pretty excited with his gift.... you couldn't wipe the smile off his face...

 Time to open his next gift...

What could be in this small package....

 He was thrilled with this one.... a back scratcher with an extendable handle.  It got some good use on Christmas Day....

We all scored well this Christmas

 Santa bought me a new backpack handbag....
Love it and love the colour too.  Think you would call it a mushroom colour.  it will be great fro going on holidays. 

The clean up...

 By the time we had finished opening our Santa presents there was a mountain of paper on Chloe's floor, as everyone gravitated to her room to open presents.  She was kind enough to give us her bed for the night...

Beautiful Danielle decided to cook us breakfast whilst we skyped with Peter and Maria in Denmark.
They had just finished their Christmas Dinner.  In Denmark,  Christmas Eve is celebrated more than Christmas Day.  They had been to church, and then come home, and all the family were together for dinner on Christmas Eve.  They sing songs and dance around the Christmas tree and then just before Midnight, they exchange their gifts.  It was really lovely chatting to them and being able to wish them a Happy Christmas and feel just a little that we were celebrating it with them...

We enjoyed this lovely Breakfast

Christmas breakfast...

After breakfast we all went to church together as a family.  It is wonderful to take time out of a busy day and celebrate the real reason we hold Christmas.  The birth of the baby Jesus,  God's provision of a Saviour for mankind...  We are blessed  and for us it is important to take time to remember the Saviour's birth and all that he represents to mankind... Our church doesn't hold a service on Christmas morning so we went to the Baptist Tab in Rocky.  Chloe's boyfriend Dan met us there...

Remembering the real reason for the season...

The service was pretty full and we managed to catch up with some friends we hadn't seen in years...
From church we did a quick drive across town to our place to pick up some cold drinks and a few other things that we had forgotten...
Then it was back to Chloe's where we started to get dinner started before opening the presents....
We wanted to get the potato and sweet potato dish ready, and prep the turkey ready to go into the oven....

When we got home, the girls realized that their lawn had been mowed whilst we were at church (who mows a lawn on Christmas Day).  Their neighbour is lovely and always mows their lawn when he does his own, so they decided to take him a plate of home cooked goodies that they had made as a thank you and also to wish him a very Happy Christmas.
They ducked next door looking like this.  

Visiting their neighbour with some Christmas goodies. 

By now it was probably close to 11am and it was time to open presents....

Chloe played Santa

 this year Chloe decided that she should play Santa since Christmas was at her place.... She doned the Santa hat and started handing out the gifts....

Santa Chloe

 First to receive a gift was me.... In fact I got two of them...

I got the first gift...

Now it turned out that my gift was 20 little batteries.... what on earth would I want 20 little batteries for... There has been a lot of excitement in our house and Steve and the kids had all put in for a special Christmas present for me this year...  Now they really had me wondering what on earth it was and was it something that really needed that many batteries...

Steve got the second gift...

 True Steve fashion,  he had to shake it and feel it and try and guess what it was...
He was pretty excited when he opened it and found out that it was one of these....

His eyes say it all here -  just how much he loved this present..

 Danielle was the next to score....

It is heavy....

and it was well wrapped with sticky tape everywhere....
Excitement plus as we were all receiving gifts that we loved...
it was getting close to 12 and we realized that we still hadn't put the turkey into the oven and it was going to take at least an hour and a half to cook, so we had to stop proceedings for a few minutes whilst lunch was popped into the oven...

Chloe scored a pamper pack...

 She was pretty excited with that....
Danielle than gave Steve and I a present....
Since we had scored our lovely Thermie a month ago, she noticed that we were using recipe books a lot more so bought us a stand to sit our book on when cooking.  It was really lovely and quite ornate.. Loved it...

Opening Danielle's gift. 

Danielle was the next to get another gift from us...

Danielle with her Candle holders...

Loved that she loved them....

 It was Chloe's turn again to get a gift...

She scored well....

 She got some really lovely perfume from her Brother (thanks Pete and Maria)  Taylor Swift... her very favourite and or course she had to put some on straight away.  Danielle got her the most amazing beach towel.  Just awesome...

With her lovely big beach towel..

I scored well again too receiving a battery operated express pedi.... I think Steve was stocking me up on Batteries to do for the next decade...

All very happy with our Christmas gifts...

Gifts for each other...

Danielle got Chloe a winter and summer version of a bath robe,  she loved them and wore them half the morning....

Danielle gets to open Chloe's present...

 Chloe got Danielle a pool for their back yard... It is really quite large.... three metres wide by .7m deep, even has it own pump.... Not sure where they are going to be able to use it though....if they stay where they are now, they at least have some yard..... They are looking at moving into something a bit bigger though so we will see....

More presents and this time both Steve and I had gifts to open...

Steve's gift from Pete and Maria...

Chloe gives Steve her and Dan's gift....
I am sure he is going to be blown away....
and he was....

Trying to guess.....

 Over the moon when he found out they had bought him a cordless angle grinder he had had his eye on for quite a while now..

One very happy Dad.

Grin from ear to ear...

 Lot and lots of cuddles...

I love seeing these pair together.... especially love seeing Steve's smile...

Lots of Love...

 Chloe's turn to get a gift from us.  She is really after a new laptop and it was our plan to help put towards that for her... Unfortunately the one she wants is not yet available in Australia so we have decided to wait until she finds something she is really really happy with.  Meanwhile we wanted her to have something to open on the day, so found this funky gift for her...

Putting it all together....

 Danielle had also got  Chloe another little gift....
I had also looked at them but thought that the girls would think I was crazy if I got them one, but she loved it and they used it all afternoon...

A Selfie stick....

 and a periscope...

Chloe with her selfie stick..

 They made out that all the presents had been given out....
and then suddenly they just happened to find one more for me...

and i-Robot for me...

My family had all chipped in together to buy one of these for me.  I had absolutely no idea...
Even as I was unwrapping it, I still had absolutely no idea what was in the box...
I was flabbergasted,  still in shock actually...

Still can't quite believe it..

Love this man of mine...

It was unreal... Chloe had come up with the idea and had enlisted the help and support of her siblings and her dad.  They even went shopping together for it, and somehow, I ended up with one way better than they had initially started looking at...

Keen to test it out....

Chloe was keen to test it out at her place and we did program it to clean her flat whilst we were out visiting in the afternoon. 
 By now it was well after 1pm and our dinner still wasn't quite cooked.  We had been invited out for afternoon tea at 3pm, so it was all hands on deck to get lunch on the table. 

Photos with our fourth daughter -  Danielle.... she has become part of our family also. 

The two girls...

 We had decided to change our lunch this year as all the family were not home and we had very limited space in Chloe's kitchen, so we organised to have turkey and ham, with Lemon, Thyme, Rosemary & Sage Roast Potatoes and two different salads.
The salads were new.  I hadn't made them before but they contained the colours and fruits of Christmas so I decided to go with them..
They both came out of the current Weightwatcher's magazine and I will be typing them on here on a later post so that I have a record of them as we will definitely be having them again... they were delicious.  I made a Crumbed Goat's cheese, cherry and rocket salad, and a Beetroot and Orange Salad that had a beautiful  yoghurt, orange and garlic dressing...  Pretty sure these are going to become favourites in our house...

Our Christmas lunch..

There was no fancy table set this year...
Chloe and Danielle don't have a dining room table as their unit is way too small... (another reason why they want to move to something a little bigger)
Our meal was had around their coffee table on disposal plates and disposal cutlery.
Still is was a lovely lunch and a lovely time together as we all shared together the things we were grateful for this year...
We all decided that regardless of the highs and lows of the year it had been a good year and we all feel extremely blessed.
It was 2pm before we sat down to lunch so it didn't leave us a lot of time to clean up after lunch as we had been invited to Chloe's boyfriend's parents for afternoon tea...
We have met them briefly once before but this was the first time we have spent any time with them...

Heading to the Bertucci's for afternoon tea...

 We had a really lovely time,  we also got to meet Dan's  Nanna who was down from Townsville for Christmas... they made us feel very welcome and we spent a couple of hours there.  It didn't surprise me because Dan is a lovely young man, and we always enjoy his company...

The crazy pair - playing with the Selfie Stick. 

 Dan's little brother got in on the act too....
He is a lovely kid and one of the things that really drew Chloe to Dan was the fact that he is very family oriented and enjoys spending time with his family.  Lovely quality to have...

Chloe with the Bertucci boys...

 We got back to Chloe's just on tea time...
Danielle had gone to her families for dinner as her younger brother was cooking a feast for them...
Neither Steve, Chloe or I felt like dinner,  we ended up having the desert that we didn't have time for at lunch time, and we just chilled out and watched a movie together...
We got home to our place around 10pm...
A different Christmas day to past ones , but it was a wonderful day filled with much love,  good company, new friends, and most importantly celebrating the birthday of our Saviour...
Next year, it will be a Latham Family Christmas, with hopefully everyone at home....