CHRISTMAS EVE 2019....

It is hard to believe that Christmas is finally here.
This morning we spent packing up and getting ready to move over to Brett and Hannah's. 
The boys went off to pick up the prawns for dinner tonight..
Chloe and I went to Cost Supplements to pick up some supplies and vitamins for me and then we took it over to Sarah's.

The morning was mostly spent getting set up for Christmas the following day, including getting the table set for Christmas lunch, the vegetables ready, so that we didn't have much to do the following morning...

Whilst  the adults were busy getting ready for Christmas, the children set up the train tracks and were busily planning with these in the lounge.... 

We normally have a family traditions of Prawns on the lawn Christmas Eve, but this year, it turned out being "Prawns on the back deck" as Brett and Hannah's home had a lovely big back deck which overlooked the lights of Brisbane... A very stunning view...

We usually try and keep our meal Christmas Eve pretty simple, like prawns, cheese and Crackers, fruit platters etc as we are normally very busy getting ready for Christmas that we like a bit of a chilled out evening without a lot of work....

The children wanted to get dressed for Christmas and Willow wanted to wear her Christmas hat over.  She was also keen for us to have photos together since we had matching hats...

With my little treasure....

I especially love this photo of us both....

This one is also another one of my favourites.... I love photos that capture the moment...

We were at Hannah and Brett's late afternoon.  We had quite a bit of food and bits and pieces to take with us....We had bought all the food we would need and a lot of the plates for the platter so in the end,  Chloe and I prepared our platters for dinner...
We had also decided to break into the ginger bread house that the children made a couple of weeks earlier when they all got together for their Christmas baking...

Our fruit platter consisted of lots of fruit with some sweets, eg, marshmallows, violet crumble, sour worms, banana lollies, kit kat amongst all the fruit...

The Ginger bread House was made and iced by the children...

Our gorgeous tropical fruit platter...

Our yummy cheese platter...

 We had bought a small portable BBQ over from Sarah's and Dan got busy setting it up on the deck so that he could start cooking our prawns... Normally we just have cold prawns but Dan had been perfecting a marinade that he wanted to try on us, so he was keen to do the cooking of these prawns....

Dan cooking our prawns

Looking real good...

 Whilst Dad was cooking the prawns, the children were hungry and were helping themselves to some of the goodies on the table whilst they waited..

 Meanwhile, whilst the children were picking the  adults were enjoying the slower pace o relaxing and chatting and catching up...

Even Penny got to join us for the Christmas Celebrations....

By now the prawns were smelling really good....

 By now dinner was cooked and it was time to start eating...  The food and company was great and the views were amazing...

Looks so good....

Plenty to eat.... and drink....

fresh prawns also....

Family photos

 We can understand why Hannah and 'Brett bought this beautiful home with views like this... It would be hard to get tired of them...

As we ate this wonderful food we were also watching a big storm build up....  it seemed to be moving very fast and heading our way...

The lights of Brisbane were beautiful...

Large flashes of lightning across the sky...

 Looking at how fast it was moving, it was decided that we needed to move everything inside as quickly as possible... and getting all the furniture on the deck secured... We were still doing all this as the rain hit and it was torrential... Everything got wet.  The water was lashing the big screen doors to the outside,  This storm just seemed to come out of nowhere and it came so quickly.

 The celebrations continued inside until the storm stopped... Then Sarah and Colin headed home with the children as they knew they would be up early the following morning and then needed to have them in bed as early as possible. 

By the time they left and we cleaned up from dinner a good hour had passed so we then all headed back to Sarah and Colin's home.   They had bought the children a trampoline for Christmas and Sarah was hoping that Steve and Dan could help her and Colin get it set up...

Meanwhile I made sure that I got the table set for Christmas the following day.

 Steve had a couple of cards he wanted to write to hang of the Christmas Tree. 
Once this was done it was good to sit back and just look at all that had been done around us...
The tree was laden with presents all ready for the morning....

gifts all wrapped and under the tree....

 All things were done...
We could now head back to our temporary residence.  There was a feeling of contentment and satisfaction as we looked around us...
We are ready for Christmas 2019....... Bring it on...........................