Our Christmas

Christmas was a quiet one this year!

We drove up to Sydney on Christmas Eve to spend a few days with Mark, Mel and Declan... oh and Ben the dog! We had a scrumptious traditional Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. The weather was beautiful and so we sat outside in the cool of the evening with a couple of bottles of Moet (thanks Mel) and had a great time.
Mel went to great lengths to organise a special Christmas - not only was the food amazing but the house was decked out in Christmas everywhere. She even had a gorgeous little Christmas village which I forgot to get a photo of :(

Christmas Day was nice and relaxed. We opened pressies and our menu for the day consisted of seafood, fresh fruit, cold ham and pork from the night before, salads and chocolate..... lots of chocolate. It was a time I was dreading and I did find it difficult... but when I found myself struggling I just took myself off for a few minutes until I felt I could join in again. Tash has really been struggling with losing Mum and is very aware that of my family the oldest person left is my brother and she really misses that older generation in her life so it was great to have a nice relaxed Christmas that she could enjoy
Then from the sublime to the ridiculous - we went from my small family gathering to driving home ... after calling into Miranda for a catch up with Heidi which always puts a smile on my face. Heidi was one of our "strays" and we have been friends for years - in fact when we were teenagers we just about lived at each others house and I still call her mother "other Mum".

Anyway from there we drove home... slowly.... very slowly.... yuck I hate holiday traffic to be greeted at the Combers by the Lucas family en masse. The scary thing..... this isn't all of them! We only got to spend an hour or so with them as we spent so much time in traffic but it was still great to see them. We got to meet the latest addition Violet (Jeneen's granddaughter) and also to see Mark (Davina's son) who was a surprise attendee.