Saturday, December 24, 2005


Xmas Day, the big 25-12, Jesus’ birthday, the day of presents, food and merriment.




The little alarm clocks woke us up at 6:00am this morning blissfully unaware of what today was. We started with opening the boys stocking presents where the highlight was some plastic spiders as they both love “pider”s. We then had some breakfast (we joked that this will be the last year of eating a proper breakfast before they start having chocolate as the norm). We then moved onto the big presents, the boys started to understand the whole present thing about now and began to ask “open”, “more”. They loved the huge wagon that Aunty Kaz, Uncle Paul, Grandma and Grandad brought them and the Noddy skittles were so gorgeous that mummy and daddy wanted to keep them for themselves! We brought the boys a blow-up ball pit which they spent all morning in while we opened our presents and drank lots of coffee and laughed at their antics. I was very spoilt with lots of lovely new Cornishware, a beautiful lemon juicer and a jam pot and Adrian loved his antique decanter from me but unfortunately I couldn’t convince him to buy any whisky yesterday and today he’s sad that he doesn’t have anything to put in it. He’s expecting that from now on when he gets home from work I’ll have the ice in the glass and his slippers warmed!

Once the boys were having their sleep Adrian and I had a huge English breakfast including black-pudding for Adrian and then he had to have a little sleep to re-charge….then it was off to the Burrows family for lunch which was great. The boys were reasonably well behaved but it was all too exciting to sit still and behave too much. They performed their party piece of animal noises and “row, row your boat” which everyone loved and then it was off home for afternoon tea. We had lots of playing in the afternoon driving the wagon around the house and feeding the noddy toys with those magic bottles that empty when you tip them up (we all remember those!). The boys then had their Christmas dinner on the special Christmas plates from Great-Grandad of turkey, cranberry sauce, peas, beef and gravy which they gobbled up happily.

We have now tucked two exhausted little boys in with the lovely story from Gandma and Grandad and with a glass of wine in hand we are about to have our picnic dinner of stilton, pate, crackers and olives - yummy.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

It’s been all sunshine and parties this weekend. After a week of incredibly hot weather the boys had their crèche Christmas Party on Friday which was lovely. It started with a proper tea party with fairy bread, brandy snaps, cheerios and cake. The boys got to sit at the proper table (not highchairs) with the big children and looked so grown up that mummy got a bit emotional. Then there was singing Christmas carols where all the children sat with their parents in a big circle singing and clapping happily….. well not ours of course….. Tom and Jack stood in the middle of the circle looking at everyone while they danced and clapped happily to all the singing… it was quite lovely. All the children were then given bells and we sang “jingle bells, jingle bells” until who should appear but Father Christmas loaded with presents. The boys weren’t as impressed by the man in the suit as the older children but happily took their present (provided of course by mummy) and “oohed” and “wowed” nicely. Full of sugar and overexcitement it was off home to play outside in the sun with buckets of water and the hose to cool off.

Saturday we had an easy day before Adrian’s work Christmas Party. The boys joined us at the beginning for the bbq where they wooed everyone with their gorgeousness especially by asking “more, please” very politely to everything they liked to eat. Mummy then took the boys home to baths and bed before joining Adrian back at the party. Our wonderful neighbours Leanne and Alistair kindly babysat while we partied the night away, it was great fun.

Today (Sunday) it was another hot sunny day so after all having our afternoon sleep (mummy and daddy needed a nap too) we all went to Makara beach which is about 10 minutes from our place. We paddled in the water and played with the boys ball until Tom throw it a little too hard and it caught the tide and was off out to sea in seconds it was miles too far for us to get it and off it floated until we could hardly see it….. then some lovely fisherman in their boat noticed the ball when they were coming back into shore and stopped to pick it up. They kindly brought it back in for us and asked the boys into the boat for look which was really kind. The water was lovely and warm so after a good play in the waves and both boys and us being absolutely drenched we’re all back home with the sun going down.

A great weekend, bring on Xmas!

Sunday, December 11, 2005

It feels like we’re living in the tropics this weekend in Wellington with hot humid weather and that feeling when you’re waiting for the rain to come and cool it all down again (it just arrived!) The busy Xmas season has started and we’ve been busy all week buying presents, making cards and decorating Christmas trees but we managed a nice family weekend all the same.

Adrian spent Saturday morning helping Chris and Sue insulate their new house so I took the boys Christmas shopping to the busiest mall in the world so we gave up and had Devonshire tea instead (we all finished covered in jam and cream – lovely), then we met Adrian for a play in the park in the sun. Adrian and I even managed a brief night out of Saturday as the lovely Mel is off home for the holidays so it was our last chance to have a babysitter for a couple of months. Sunday was absolutely glorious so we had a great day at the beach. The boys chased seagulls, dipped their toes in the water and got covered in sand and ice-cream.

Well I can confirm that the boys will be New Zealand’s answer to the “Cray Twins”, the crèche told me this week that Thomas was in a slight “altercation” with his friend Bethany over a favourite push car and when he couldn’t get her off he got quite upset. Jack “bully boy” O’Donnell, came to Tom’s rescue and sorted Bethany out getting her off the car and giving it to Tom. Now I have to say that although this behaviour is not something I would like to encourage, I couldn’t help feeling a little proud of them all the same.

The boy’s vocabulary is motoring along and we have to be much more careful of what we say. This week they had us in hysterics when they started copying their mum by standing at the hall door shouting “ADE, ADE” complete with mummy’s fishwife accent.

Have a great week everybody.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Only 20 Days till Xmas !!!!!!

Things are moving very quickly towards Xmas and we're not very organised at all. Both Adrian and I have been flat out at work and the boys are keeping us on our toes at home. We had a good weekend even though the weather was pretty awful. Spent Saturday looking at houses and visiting friends and Saturday night our neighbours had an great Xmas party which went till the wee hours of Sunday morning (Adrian of course was still there at finishing time).

The boys are growing up way too fast and every day are doing something new. This week has been all about counting but the only number they can say well is "two" so everything is "two" even when it's five but they love the countdown to "beeeeep" on the microwave and play a game when their milk is heating up where they spin around and around like the bottles, then count "two, two, two, beep".

Their other favourite game at the moment is "Ring a Ring a Rosie" but it's mainly all about the "all fall down" with a big crash and alot of giggling.

Well that's it for this week, time for pudding and a cuppa - sadly no cheese-cake this week though :)