An Early Christmas - the Beach

Jo and Bruce were headed to Australia over the holidays, so we celebrated Christmas with them a week early. I highly recommend splitting the holiday over two weekends - otherwise it's just too many places that you have to be at one time. I love splitting it up this way, and if I had it my way, would do this every year.

The weather was great - this is not always the case...in NZ it can be very up and down, but we lucked out with a warm (hot!) sunny day with very little wind.

Wyatt's first Christmas

We ate, drank, ate, drank...

The boys were spoiled. Toys, wool sleep sac for Wyatt, diggers, and more toys! Luca actually screamed when he opened some of his gifts. His scream would stop Wyatt in his tracks, and then of course Wyatt would have to crawl over to Luca to 'help' him play with his new toys. We were all spoiled with an amazing Lunch and dinner, and we got to catch up with Bruce's kids and their families. It was the first Christmas with multiple littlies. Luca also screamed with delight when James opened his gift - a remote controlled helicopter! James would go outside and attempt to learn how to fly it. Luca would wait patiently till it crashed then go run after it. Almost like a bird dog! ha ha

and then before we knew it, it was time for more drinking and eating! We left around 8:30pm, with full bellies, and we had to actually 'load' the car up with toys and boxes. Luca was so hyped up that he managed to stay awake for the whole car ride home.


It was a wonderful celebration with family, but I've got to be completely honest about one thing.

I've given it a good five years....and I definitely prefer the northern hemisphere Christmas. It's just not the same without cold weather and snow, Christmas lights, and indoor cozy parties. Having Christmas in the winter gives you something to look forward to during the cold months, it helps to break up the year. In NZ, you wait all winter (and it's a LOOONG winter) and then you have summer break and Christmas all in the same few months. Besides, snowflakes, snowmen, and pine trees just seem odd when you are in the middle of summer. Oh, and this year I heard that St. Louis actually had a white Christmas. How cool is that?! But regardless of my opinion, here's some cool beachy Christmas shots...

Wyatt's first crawl on the beach

Jo and Bruce's amazing view and backyard - the beach is literally just through the dunes

Backseat driver

It had just started to rain (again for 5th time in the morning) as we were driving into town today. In a very soft and innocent voice Luca said "Mommy you're being naughty." When I asked him why, he said "because you don't have your wipers on or your lights!" Easy, tiger it had only been raining for a few seconds! Ha ha....he's pretty funny. My three year old driving instructor.

He will also occasionally tell Daddy and Oma, "Slow down, it's not a racing car." I don't think our little blue car could get to speeds anywhere close to that of a racing car, but now Oma's car.... now that's another story. ha ha

Christmas Prep

Christmas festivities have been in full swing for the past few weeks. I waited till James got back from Singapore and we decorated the tree and got out our small box of decorations. As a young (can we even call ourselves that anymore?!) couple, we just don't have that many decorations - I think it's something we'll need to aquire over the years. Our tree looks pretty good, and thanks to Grandma Cassie, we got some pretty sweet stockings. The new house is bigger, and thus we need a few more decorations to add to the collection. Two really cool things we got to do this year.
1. Hang stocking on the fireplace! One of the main reasons I wanted a mantle was to have a place to hang the stockings. Now....trying to hang them was another mission. In the states you can get these stocking holder things - like paperweights - but in NZ each one costs about $50. Yeah....Crazy expensive. In the end we used those 3M sticky hook things, and they actually look pretty good.
2. Hang matching wreaths on our front doors. I'm a big fan of wreaths, and I wanted two to match for our double doors. After visiting every single christmas shop in town, and seeing how expensive they were I decieded to make my own. And...they look pretty darn good If I do say so myself.
Since putting up the tree - I've had to redecorate it about a dozen times. Wyatt is our expert tree dissassembly man. Now we only have it decorated from midway to the top. Oh! Along with the new wreaths, we also purchased an angel for the top. That was an exciting day, as I found one 1/2 off last week. In fact, I don't think you should ever pay full price for christmas decorations. Does that make me sound cheap? Yeah, probably but when you are struggling to afford diapers and petrol, christmas decorations are a pretty low priority!


That's enough new decorations for one year. Next year my mission is to find matching fake greenery for the mantle and also for the front hall table. Our house looks more cozy with the decorations up, and I will be sad to take them down - we really do need to get some things to make our home feel more 'homely.' If only we had a Garden Ridge here....

I was hoping to get some cutsy decorating the tree photos with the kids - after all it is Wyatt's FIRST CHRISTMAS but Luca was in a 'mood' and refused to wear clothes, and all Wyatt wanted to do was play with the sparkly balls. Bless him.

I'm at home with the boys every Mon/Tue/Wed until I start back at work full time. It's all good when it's nice outside. We visit friends, we go for walks, we go to the park or for hikes (sometimes twice a day) but when it rains, it's not so fun. I've checked out every children's christmas picture book, and DVD that I could find from the library. We've made cards, cookies, and gifts for teachers at the preschool. Being inside all day drives me crazy. Or maybe it's the kids that drive me crazy.

Anyways, here's a few pics of our cookie making project.


I'm hosting a second annual cookie exhange at my house. My big plan was to make peanut brittle. I failed. 3 batches failed (using two different recipes) - plan B was to make more sugar cookies. 5 dozen more! The cookie exchange was a success. Lots of girl talk and drinking of bubbles. Gotta sample all my brands somehow.
I think I'd rather make these cute cookie jars instead. This way I don't end up gaining 5 lbs from eating batter and cookies laying around the house. Oh, and get this...no one in NZ has ever seen this concept. Well most people haven't. They all thought I was so clever to make this up. Ha, yeah right. Luca loved helping me make them, and he'll get a kick out of delivering them to our neighbors on Christmas eve.

We took the old fashioned steam engine train to fielding to see their christmas parade. Luca loved the train, and of course the parade. But honestly I think the train was the highlight of the day. Oh, and riding the mini ferris wheel with Daddy.

Hard to believe only a few more days until Christmas! We're hosting James' family at our house on Christmas day, so we are hoping for sunny weather so that the kids can go for hikes on the trails and play on the slip n' slide. This whole week has been wet and windy. I almost wish it would snow - then it would feel like Christmas.