On Christmas Eve we chillaxed and then tried to get a holiday photo of us in the pool. Unfortunately the sign wasn't bold enough and the sun was too bright on the paper so this was the best we could do:
I set up our presents and cards under the tree, they look pretty good and we were shocked with how many we have!
We also have a tiny weeny baby gecko who lives in our bathroom! How cute is he!!!
On Christmas Day I woke up at exactly 6.45am on the dot and I skyped with my mum. It was Christmas Eve for her and John but I opened my presents from them.
I got the best surprise: my mum sent me a mini stocking! I'd sent her a Christmas card saying I was going to miss my yearly stocking and food, and by the time she got the card she'd already sent me a stocking! It was really well thought out and wonderful. Things that weren't too heavy and were useful for us. Plus there are loads of rules about sending things to Australia, you can't send food or shampoo. But she did manage to send some gravy! and some packets of shampoo..
She also sent my favourite ever movie fly away home, which I refuse to watch today cause I will cry.. Some awesome GB earrings some tea, some books, a NZ 10 dollar bill, some cool christmas cake decorations and an eye tattoo.
She also got me the best thing ever. You may or may not know (care) that I love maps. There is nothing better than a map. I also like textiles. So she got me a blanket with a map embroidered on to it!!! It's fantastic, but still in England as it's massive (and no use to me here).
but Tanbay said it was a weird thing to have, so he had bacon and eggs and THEN pancakes.
We opened the rest of our presents and cards. Kerry and Brian (our best friends who we house sat for before in Queensland) got us this fantastic hamper:
Katie who we are currently house sitting for got us these!:
I'm not sure how she knew these are our absolute favourite chocolates of all time.
Godmother Polly got us these gorgeous boxes of tea
Aren't they cute!
Next we went swimming and drank some cider in the pool!
Then we divided the chocolates and watched Charlies Angels.
These were Tanbays:
and these were mine:
For lunch we had salmon and camembert wraps - very delicious.
We had some of our Barossa valley port which was even better than we remembered
and then we decided to walk to the beach:
It's only 26 degrees today (it's been 31 or so the rest of the week) and it was a bit cloudy. But people were still at the beach fishing, jet skiing and bbqing.
This is the Gold Coast!! It normally looks a bit more golden ;)
The beach wasn't as good as the other ones we've seen at the Gold Coast but the houses were massive!
The canal houses here are very very expensive.
Does anyone know what this is??
When we got back we decided we needed to go swimming again.
For dinner we had ozzie pies, potatoes and carrots. The pies were really yummy. But as the photo indicates it wasn't the yummiest Christmas meal but I knew I'd never be close to my mums xmas din dins so I didn't even try ;)
Laura's carrot vs Tanbay's carrot
I skyped with my dad and Em which was great to see them :)
Desert was delicious!! We had the best desert ever at Kerry and Brian's the other day and Tanbay found an even better version at Aldi. Say what you want about Aldi, they know how to do deserts.
I served it with a spoon and Tanbay asked if I had gone insane and was trying to ruin Christmas.. then went to get himself a fork.
I rang my Grandma and had a great talk about Australia and New Zealand (cause she's been to both) :)
All in all it's been an awesome day with delicious food (mostly) and very thoughtful and kind presents. However, every day here is awesome, so it didn't really feel like Christmas that much.. maybe because the evening Christmas film in Australia was jaws ;)
Hope you all had a very very merry Christmas! Thank you to everyone that thought of us :)
