Christmas Day

more pics here


Where else would I start telling the story of Christmas day but at the beginning of the day with the opening of gifts? With five rather lucky kids and five adults present there was always going to be quite a few gifts but I had not anticipated the exact size of the pile of presents which was encroaching on the limited sitting space of our over crowded lounge-room. Amongst the dolls, transformers, cars, clothing and lip gloss my daughter was particularly impressed with the popup princess tent/castle where she spent the morning hosting tea parties and staging fairytale stories. Meanwhile the boys were busy getting in some target practice with new guns and jousting one another with light sabers.

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The weather fortunately turned out to hold out with sunshine, we had been expecting the last few days of rain to continue over on to Christmas day. So we were able to get outside early in the day with ham and eggs cooked on the barbeque for breakfast washed down with a nice pink champagne. Once breakfast was settled everyone was keen to enjoy a swim and to morning proceeded with swimming and plenty of eating and drinking and everybody was generally enjoying themselves. There was quite a bit of amusement passing around the incoming text messages which added to steady stream of visitors with six families and a couple of individuals attending some part of the day.





Lunch was the pinnacle of the wining and dining of the day and my wife presented a lovely meal with loads of salads ham off the bone and fresh prawns with sea food sauce. The lunch was enjoyed by all on top of the readily available finger foods and home made confectionaries with all the ladies putting in a huge effort in the kitchen. All of this dining and a number of beverages lead some of us to take a quick nap before taking to the sports field mid afternoon.
The sporting prowess on display might only be described as a bit on the mediocre side but everyone had a good time. There was some good strokes played by everyone who stepped up to bat and we managed not to loose the ball. Only the simplest of the catches were taken with quite a number going to ground amid the laughter. By far the fielding effort of the day has to go to Justin who truly put his body on the line in a fine fielding performance.

more pics here

Christmas on the whole turned out to be a fun filled day that for some extended into the night. We have all had a very merry Christmas and are all looking forward to what the new year might bring.

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Preparation of a pitch

In preparation for the Christmas gathering it was determined that no Christmas would be complete with out an all inclusive game of cricket. So Barry kindly volunteered himself to become the first official curator of the Alexandra St Cricket oval (this being our first Christmas in residence).

The Day started as any other day with my usual preparations and heading off to work at around 8:00am. Barry started his day in the usual way and headed off from Blackwater at about 9:00am. He made the two hour journey in to Rockhampton with out anything of consequence happening and arrived mid morning according to plan. It all looked like it would be over for Barry before I returned home from work and he would be at home with his dog fed and relaxing for his own dinner.

We had previously determined that the oval was to be situated on the otherwise disused area to the back of our house yard that was to be reserved for the eventuality that our landlord might attract a light industry to the three bay shed towards the back of the allotment. With this area not presently in use and the grass in a grossly overgrown state Barry’s first decision was that the lawn mower was not going to do this in a single cut. He would in fact have to set the blades as high as they could possibly go, cut the grass and then reset the blade height to lower setting for the second cutting. So he proceeded with the blades set high and was off to a good start.

Barry worked on for the morning with his distinctive black hat molded down over his head and all but covering his shoulders. It was down by the shed that disaster struck, Barry did not see the large baser brick hidden in the long grass as the lawn mower careered in to it. The lawn mower was rendered unusable.

After some hours of repairs carried out on the lawn mower Barry comes to the decision that he will do better to temporarily abandon the old lawn mower which belongs to his father in law in favor of a new mower (he will just have to repair the old one before returning it). The day drags on.

It is 6:00pm when I return home to see a rather exhausted Barry just finishing off the second round of mowing on his brand new mower. After spending a couple of hours buying a mower and arranging means of getting it to our place Barry will be glad to put this saga behind him. He is understandably tired and frustrated as he comes in to the fish and chips that we have rapidly purchased for the unexpected dinner party. At 7:30 Barry’s tired family climb into the family vehicle headed to Blackwater. They leave behind them one ride on mower in need of repair.

Hello World

Hello and welcome to my first post. I intend to write to this blog each week with a bit of an insight into my daily living and the goings on around me. Topics may include my family, my gardening which I enjoy but have varying success at and anything else that happens to take my interest for a while. At the moment the one thing that is consuming almost all of our spare time and by far the single topic that is at the center of my two daughters universe is that old favorite Christmas. So readers that are looking for something else over the festive season I'm sorry to inform you that you might have to stay tuned for what might come up next year. I also have a bit of an interest in GNU software so you might here of some cool little programs or features that I come across here and there or I may even venture into the odd tutorial I am not really sure at this stage. I am all so a keen spectator of cricket so you could find a bit of one eyed commentary in some of my posts.

Anyway back to what to expect over the next couple of weeks its jingle bells. Coming from Central Queensland, Australia ours is a summer Christmas so there will be no tales of snowed in cars and bobsleds here. Our Christmas is celebrated over the bar-b-q by the swimming pool. We have a few rellies coming over and their promises to be a friendly game or two of cricket and soccer. Those from Europe may know of soccer by its real name of football which in the Australian vernacular refers to rugby both league and union. Preparations are underway and over the next few weeks you will here of some of the toils and triumphs as we prepare to get the house worthy of this family gathering. I promise to include some photos and a few of the real life dramas and the deadlines draw tighter but for now I had better sign off and a good night to all.
MERRY CHRISTMAS.