Christmas Wrap...

Well, Christmas has been and gone for another year and I have to say it was one of the better ones. I think our approach to having one family get together on Christmas Day and one on Boxing Day worked very well. Our girls were much more relaxed, they got to spend time doing what they wanted rather than being ferried in a car and the days leading up to Christmas were much more relaxing than last year.

Christmas Day was spent at my sister in laws Lyn and all of Niki's family gathered for lunch. We had a hot lunch this year with baked potatoes, broccoli & cauliflowers and beans and carrots. Hot turkey and cold ham accompanied this and we basically stuffed ourselves. We even got a game of road cricket in and the girls swam in their new swimmers and using their new goggles & snorkels despite it being overcast and cool...

Before lunch however, the girls woke us up at a respectable time of 7am to open presents and the girls got what they have been asking for for weeks: Kate a PlayStation 2 with Singstar and Brooke got a Nintendo DS Lite with games.


There were other presents, but this was the main game for our girls and they were very excited.



Boxing Day was my family over to our place and we had a cold lunch after I had gone down to the Fishmarkets... I left the house at 5:15am to be there at 6 and I picked up about 3kg of prawns and 8 Balmain Bugs.... very yummy.

Funniest thing of course was my family all belting out songs on the Singstar... lets just say we all hum the national anthem!



All up a better Xmas than last year... to be able to spend each day at one place was much better rather than driving like a mad idiot!

I'm still here!

Have been trying to do a mass xmas picture post with Blogger and Picasa but it has been shitting me and I have given up! So, instead I am resorting to the primitive version of blogging - typing out a post!

Xmas was very busy (and I mean busy!) but good. The girls got heaps of presents and had a great time.

The early morning saw us open up Santa's sack and he had brought Kate a Keyboard and for Brooke a DVD player as the main presents. There were other things, but they were the big ticket items :-)

Niki's parents ducked over for breakfast and gave the girls an inflatable pool - which they havent been out of since! - and we had croissants with ham and cheese.

Then it was off to my sisters at Ryde for lunch with my parents, my grandfather (who had come down from the Gold Coast) and her inlaws. Saw my Uncle Scott (will send you some pics soon) briefly as well and realised that our family is scattered everywhere on Xmas. My other
grandfather was with Dad's step-sisters family and my other Uncle (Dad's brother) was at his daughters (my cousins if you're following) place for lunch. Coincidently, she lives about 10mins from my place, but I was at Ryde for lunch. All sounds too stupid heh....

But we had to leave at 3:00 and head home where we were hosting Niki's family for dinner. 17 people after a big lunch and they too had had big lunches elsewhere. Niki's brother Michael had eaten at his inlaws and her parents had had lunch at her sisters at Penrith, but came up to our
place for the second sitting. Again it seems too hard and difficult!

But the meals themselves were great, its just a pity we felt in such a rush and by the time the night was over, we were well and truly stuffed. 2 big meals the second of which we hosted, 120kms travelled in between.

Not next year!

Today, we got our new car - Toyota Camry Ateva. Very happy with it. Finally after 6 weeks of crapping on, we have the new car. Silver in colour, I will take a picture of it and post it soon.
And on Friday, we head to Bateau Bay on the NSW Central Coast.... Just the four of us... rest and solitude. There will be no posts while away, but I'll see what I can do when we do get back on the 6th.

Hope you're all having good breaks, and have a Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas

People should be doing better things than reading a blog, but for those that do and are, Merry Christmas to you all!

I have managed to restore my PC last night and Lime Kettles will continue to be sporadically posted to during the Christmas break.

My plans are a week at home through to the 30^th, then we’re off to Bateau Bay on the NSW Central Coast for a week, then it’s a further week at home – without Xmas functions! – and then back to work on the 15^th.

So, Merry Christmas, have a great end of 2006 and I hope to bring you some more rantings and ravings from the last car of the train next year…

Weekend Wrap

Just realised that I only have 4 days of work to go and hence only 4 more days of web access from work.  With my PC dying, I will be bringing my work laptop home, but I am not sure how to connect my Internode ISP service via my work laptop?  I guess I will fiddle around with it…

The weekend itself was great, a big Xmas party Friday night, a good win at cricket on Saturday and a Xmas Picnic on Sunday with friends at Parramatta Park.

Saturday night had a big Chinese meal with Mum & Dad to FINALLY conclude my birthday celebrations and I guess the whole weekend was an exercise in eating and drinking, but to summarise:

Xmas Party:  Dressed as a hobbit, costume was a bit of a success.  Drank fairly heavily, but was not too bad… didn’t eat enough food, got a fake tat that is still on… caught the bus back to the office, found a taxi and was home around 1am.

Cricket:  Played up at Castle Hill in a one-day game.  We were sent in and struggled.  Lost two early wickets before yours truly and Pete put on a 40 odd partnership.  Pete went for 25 and I went quickly behind for 18… the opposition bowlers were very SLOW and that meant there were lots of false shots and slogs.  We were in deep trouble at 7/73 before Big Nick Nardo slogged a massive 49 off very few balls and Stuart Cass hit 29 to get us to all out for 160 in 40 overs.

We then had Hills Barbarians in huge trouble.  1/0, 2/0, 3/2, 4/10…. We destroyed their top order and basically from then on had it in the bag, but some late hitting by their #11 got them to 120.   A great win, we reach the Xmas break in 2^nd spot on 50 points.

Dinner Sat Nite:  Mum & Dad gave me a new office chair for the study complete with a plastic floor mat – something I have needed but never had the cash or inclination to buy… funny how I now have a computer chair, but no computer!  Dinner at the Hilltop Phoenix at Castle Towers which included Salt & Pepper Lobster from the tank.  Love the Chinese and I hadn’t eaten on Saturday, so dinner was a gorge fest… Niki drove me home as I was once again a tad under the weather.

Sunday Xmas Picnic:  A great day at Parra Park with salads and chicken for eats, plus cake & chocolates for desert.  I didn’t intend to drink and only took mineral water, but I bummed a couple of beers of Siebs.  Some tennis ball cricket and sitting under the shady trees listening to the cricket whilst the kids ran around.  We also had brought our own kids a cheapie present and Joe played “Santa’s Helper” and handed out the presents and chuppa chups.  Amazing how kids really believe that Santa came and dropped off a bag of presents behind the tree…  Was a very relaxing day…

PC Problems...

Today is Work Xmas Party Day and people in the office are genuinely excited, so it should be a big one.  I have my hobbit suit at the ready and today will be a bit of a weird one trying to work in amongst people running around getting ready…

However, my mood has been tempered a bit by the fact my home PC died last night… I have had some sort of major disk crash and I don’t think I can reboot the system.  It dumps to a black DOS screen with “Invalid System Disk” or something… no SAFE Mode, no nothing.  I think in the coming holidays I will be trying to rebuild a new one and recover some of the important stuff (i.e. photos) from the old one.  Not what I had in mind…

bored...

Work is dead… every afternoon, the emails stop and nobody appears interested… we have well and truly hit the silly season.  Tomorrow I am going out for lunch at the Rugby Union Players Assoc Christmas party.  Given I am not a huge rugby fan, you could ask why?  Well the simple answer is that there’s free beer and food and going back to the office is not expected…

The office, and I mean the building, not just my floor, has been half empty as people toodle off for a luncheon “with a client” and never come back.  Next week will be no better as I have to leave early on Wednesday for the girls’ dance concert, Thursday I will be at the Sydney FC game courtesy of corporate largesse and on Friday we have our company’s Xmas Party… you know, the one in which I am going as a hobbit :-)

Heading off now… no post via the train tomorrow as I will be driving the Mazda 6 back to the dealership.  The car looks nice and is not a bad car, but I don’t know if it will be suitable as a family car. We’ll see, its all about the $’s.

Hobbits Go Back To Work

The weekend is over already and it feels like it hardly started… Monday’s come around very quickly!

The weekend though was very full and busy.  Friday night we all went to the soccer and saw Sydney FC play Queensland.  Niki had never been before but it was a great night and the girls were into it with their flags and face painting.  I think because soccer is an easy game to comprehend rules wise (don’t use your hands, kick it into the goal) the girls could understand it.  They were also into the sing-along chants of the Sydney FC fans in The Cove and we had a great time.

Saturday saw me wanting to head out in the morning and do a lot of errands so I took the girls out with me and got my suits dry cleaned, the car washed, a few nick-nacks at the shops and went hunting for my work Christmas Party costume.  The theme is “The Land of Make Believe” and I pretty early on decided to go as something out of Lord of the Rings.  After little debate, I have decided to go as a Hobbit.  I have ¾ shorts, I bought a cheap white cotton button down shirt, hired a cloak, belt, sword and vest for the night (only $22) and bought for $4 a set of Elf ears from the costume hire place.  All set and done… and the best thing is I get to go bare feet!  Will fluff up the hair a bit on the night and I am debating how to tackle the “hairy feet” issue… my feet aren’t hairy so I am debating to either do nothing or glue some hideous merkin like thing onto my feet… probably go with the do nothing option, but any ideas welcome.

Sunday morning went to Niki’s parents to help set up their new plasma TV… I am hopeless with home electronics and have no idea what all the cables mean, but we got all the TV channels locked in and learnt how to switch from Digital to Analogue.  Could only pick up the Nine and Seven channels on the DTV (I thought ABC had a digital station?) and 10, SBS and the community channels are on the analogue.  Confusing as all hell this stuff (for me anyway) but its working now.  Lunch time was spent at a BBQ with all my old uni friends and was very relaxing… so relaxing that when we got home Niki suggested I take it easy and watch the cricket and the next thing I was being woken up after 2+ hrs of a nap… very hobbit like!