Christmas 2008!

I awoke Christmas morning to the site of the beating sun upon the green grass. This was definitely a different feel to the waking up in a warm bed on a cold winter morning. Looking outside to mayhaps see the snow falling. Well, different feel, but it had its own charm. To commemorate the summer Christmas, I grabbed an empty beer bottle and posed for a photo out in a lawn chair with my Santa hat and sunglasses, hence the below Christmas Card.

Everyone was working Christmas day. Les came home around noon, Jess was trapped at the restaurant until nearly four, and Jon and Em got stuck until as late with their other Christmas engagements. I was scheduled to work, but after a few cancellations, I was the first to get the axe. It makes sense though, Christmas is triple pay holiday here, and since I'm a casual employee, I get the premium $20 an hour. So, I missed out on three hours of work at $60 an hour! Oh well, nobody really wants work on Christmas anyway.

We had a large late lunch of Roast pork with crackling, roast beef, chicken, vegetables, oysters, cocktail prawns, and bread pudding with custard for dessert. I made some homemade eggnog which kept us all pretty jolly for the day.

After filling ourselves stupid with food, we opened our presents. The highlights included a Pandora bracelet for Sharon with an assortment of charms, a romantic getaway weekend with champagne and chocolate for Jon and Em, the two spite gifts of snore spray for Les's nose and seat covers for his beat-up ute (pickup), we all chipped in and bought Les a new cover for the back of his pickup, I got the first four seasons of the wire, a gift certificate to the local outfitters, an Aussie cookbook, and a couple of nice shirts (a great gift as I hate to shop for clothes). Every year, I like to give an obnoxious gift; this years recipient was Jess. We both love these snack cracker here called Shapes. So I bought five boxes of Shapes, printed off little message cards on each one, and wrapped them each up with a small gift. One in a box with a brick, others set up in weird, unguessable "shapes". Jess you could tell liked it, but I got called a "fool". I'm so glad I can amuse myself so easily.

Finally, we all hunkered down with our eggnog and chatted and lounged for the rest of the night. 'Twas a nice Christmas.