Saturday, December 20, 2008

Christmas Cheer

It has been slow, but finally we are starting to see some Christmas spirit around here. There are some decorations and lights up, but nothing like the outrageous displays you see in some parts of NZ.

We are now well into the ’13 Days of Christmas’ – this is the countdown to Christmas Day and each evening a church gets to do their show – lots of Christmas Carols and hymns etc and everyone is dressed up in their Sunday best. This is shown live on TV each evening.

The various work functions are underway. Angela is going out for dinner with her library team and USP had a few drinks after work on Friday. I have the advantage of working for 2 different companies at the moment, so get to enjoy twice the Christmas cheer! This has included a great hamper, complete with a turkey and ham from Kramer Group.

The turkey came at a good time as we had invited Nicola a Fraser around for a ‘kiwi’ Christmas dinner. Angela did a great job of the mince pies, shortbread and even a pavlova with kiwifruit on top!

Last weekend we had some of our friends from netball around for Christmas dinner. This included roast potatoes, pumpkin, chicken (we couldn’t get turkey) garlic bread etc. All the usual kiwi Christmas fare. This was also Angela’s first attempt at a pavlova, and it was a success. Actually, too much of a success as there were no leftovers for me! She also made shortbread and mince pies, but this proved to be a more challenging than normal. First we couldn’t find any pastry so had to make our own. Then we couldn’t find any fruit mince, so Angela decided to have a go at making some. It turned out good, the secret ingredient was Jack Daniels!

So, we are now feeling the Christmas spirit and looking forward to heading off to New Zealand to spend Christmas with our families. We are flying out later tonight, so in case we don’t get the chance to post anything else –

MERRY CHRISTMAS
AND A
HAPPY NEW YEAR

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