A Must Post Before Midnight

Our first born grandchild is now 9 years old!! Our beautiful Baie. A must to post this before the end of 2009!

We wish you enough Baie...

We wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how grey the day may appear. We wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.

We wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.

We wish you enough pain so that even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.

We wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting and enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
But most of all we wish you enough love to keep on loving right back.

PS: We also wish you enough cake!

A BEAUTIFUL BOY'S MANY FACES

HAPPY

PENSIVE

QUESTIONING

JUST PLAIN....

UTTERLY BEAUTIFUL!!

(Am I biased??!)

Our Christmas Concert

Tulle started our concert off by singing Mary's Boy Child - this year baby Jesus came resplendent with pink bow (unfortunately this bow and headband is permanently attached to the doll's head), please look past the pink bow.
Tulle sang the story of the birth of Jesus while....
Rori and Baie placed the nativity (we did eventually move Mary and Joseph much closer together andto their baby!). The kayak in the background obviously adding much authenticity to the whole scene :)

This was followed by Baie's solo of Rainbow Connection learned last year in junior choir.
Tulle then performed her jazz number to Ease on Down the Road - unbeknown to us she missed some steps and was rather distraught about it!! We all thought it was fabulous!Baie performed two of her favourite dances; the Scottish Lilt and the Irish Jig, again in costume very authentic to the dances!!
Rori's item was You Are My Sunshine sang solo by Nan!! She's known the words since she was 2 years old, but unlike her sisters was a bit stage struck! (Note lips clasped firmly shut!)


Then it was Nash and the Perryman Sisters performing If You're Happy And You Know It...

Clap Your Hands!

and

Stomp Your Feet

And last but not least the "Nash Dash"; the stage is not for him, back to the truck if you please!

The Gifts

I think the smile says it all - delighted. One of the girls' gifts this year was a little sewing machine, and here are the bits that go with it - the sewing kit and lots of colourful felt to learn with.
"Hmm - Interesting," thinks nephew Rob! (or is this really one of the REAL KINGS?)

Nope, definitely our Robbie!
Rori lines up her favourite of favourites, that would be a giant box of Cadbury Favourites, luckily there is an electric toothbrush right next to it to delete the damage.

Hmmm, must check out what' in those chocs!
And they keep coming - the new kayak did very well on it's first ride on the grass!
OH MY GOSH - WE LOVE IT!

Then it was Nash's turn.....

There were presents galore and cousins galore to help.A big ole Tonka Truck with a bonus hard hat and tools - what more could a kid want?

WEEELLLL..............
How about Nan's laundry trolley - that would work!

The Preparation Cont....

Before breakfast it was time to prepare the rest of the feast.
Can't imagine why the tape dispenser is on the bench???
Carol and I have been doing this for so long now we don't even have to talk!
So glad Allan was about to pick up the camera!

The Three T's Of Christmas

Three things I love about Christmas.....

The TREE of course - you've already heard the story of the tree so wont elaborate except to say that the star and the gift wrapping are the only two coordinating items on the whole tree! Although if you look closely you will find a blue bauble from Seattle and a dancing fairy in similar colours :)
The TABLE......I love decorating the Christmas table, this year the same as last year except for the addition of the beautiful aqua blue mosaic tree that I picked up in the post Christmas sales in Robe for a song! And a couple of large chalices also on sale but this year from Target.



I forgot to photograph the bonbons made by the girls - you can just see the remnants in the pic below.
The of course comes the TUCKER!
Here's the masterchef at work!
A huge roast lamb, pork with perfect crackling and a weeny turkey roll!
This is all eventually followed by the plum pudding. Baie is becoming quite adept in all aspects of pudding making and unravelling!

Aided of course by Tulle. Baie and Tulle were the servers of the custard and ice-cream.
And here's the pudding in all it's glory, plump full of flavour and fruit and can you see one of the silver coins just poking through the surface?

PREPARE YE THE WAY....................

Well Christmas has come and gone again and here's a little peek at how we prepared for this special day....

Our Christmas tree that we thought was just "Awesome" approximately 30ish years ago (Steve was around 4 years old when we purchased it from John Martins in Adelaide), is slightly worse for wear. A few branches have fallen away and it's nowhere near as tall as it was when we bought it!!! So I had decided that we would just go with the little fibre optic for another year until we found a new one...........BUT the girls asked, "When are you putting your tree up Nan?" And I thought why not, just one more year and away they went opening the decoration boxes, oohing and aahhing over the different trinkets that we have kept over the years.

Whenever we travel overseas we endeavour to purchase a Christmas decoration for our tree, so though it is not particularly beautiful it holds memories of our travels, some given to us by friends and memories of our own boys at a very young age decorating the tree with some of the decorations still being used right up until now!
"Where's this one from Nan?" "That's the one we just bought in China Tulle, it is hand made from copper, hand painted and fired up to 8 times to make it look so beautiful. It is called Cloissonne."

"Where's this one from Nan?" "Well Tulle, that one's from Target in Mount Gambier!"

"What about this one Nan?" says Baie, "That's from Peru in South America and it's a little Nativity scene placed inside a gourd". "What's a gourd Nan?!"....................
They did a lovely job of it and this year the tree was decorated from the bottom right to the top - Baie can finally reach right up!

Then comes the Christmas baking:
The Christmas Cake, Cookies, Fudge, Caramel Popcorn
(Fudge in the tin already!).

And of course there's the pudding!

Ingredients at the ready and the pot ready to boil.


The coins (pre 1966) are scrubbed and ready to go into the pudding mixture.

And the fun begins - how lucky am I to have 3 MASTER CHEFS at hand!


And a husband armed with the camera for any photo opportunities!!!!! (just scooping up the butter that slithered to the floor!) I really should bend those knees :)
Now this year's pudding has a bit of a story attached - hope you have time for a short read!

Just before the point of putting the dried fruits in, that's after the rubbing of the butter into the flour....Jaime noticed that some of the fruit was out of date. No mind I say, this stuff lasts forever! Upon closer inspection found that the sultanas did in fact look a little fermented and decided to replace said fruit. Fortunately had another little stash of fruit, weighed it up, placed in bowl and proceeded with pudding mixing, tossing out fermented fruit etc. Time came to add fruit to mixture - OH MY GOSH I've tossed out the fresh fruit and put the fermented lot into pudding mix - WHAT A GOOSE! So quick trip to local supermarket for MORE fresh dried fruit and we started the whole pudding from scratch!!!!

So, on with the show! The girls proceeded with the mixing, - they are very experienced pudding makes, they've been doing it since they were old enough sit up on the bench and put their hands in the mixture!

The fruit and sugar goes in........

Add 8 lovely farm fresh free range eggs!


And then the best part of all - all hands in to mix it all up.


This year Nash was not at all keen and I had to encourage him to put his fingers in. Maybe "force" his fingers in would be more correct!


Squish, squish, squish........ much better than finger painting, especially when you get to lick your fingers afterwards!

Girls love it - Boy hates it!

Then it's wrapped and strung and put in the pot.

I'm not sure how long we have been eating this particular plum pudding recipe in our family but I do know it's longer than I've been alive and that's a LONG LONG LONG LONG LONG time :)