Christmas

I had put so much effort into Christmas preparations, that I gave no thought to the time afterwards. As we were celebrating both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I suddenly realised, this will be over soon. What will be next?

For me, half of the excitement is looking forward to something and this year was no exception. As I cleaned the ceilings and weeded the garden, washed the windows and water-blasted the deck, my thoughts were always on having the place looking good for Christmas and the anticipation of having time with those who were coming. I think back to my own youth. I had been away on my big OE for 18 months. I wrote to my mother telling her I wouldn’t be returning to New Zealand for some time, but surprised her by turning up on her doorstep just before Christmas. Wouldn’t it have been nice for her if she knew I was coming!

We had such a great Christmas this year. Levi, Rosie and their family stayed the Friday night along with Jason and his partner, Pat, and on Saturday, we were joined by Michael, Genevieve, Willow and Genevieve's friend Ashleigh. That was after Rosie's children had opened their Christmas presents a day early, as their family was travelling to Queenstown on Christmas day and there would be no time for that the next morning.

We had our first Christmas celebration that day, deciding on a hot menu, just to give variation, as we would be repeating the celebrations the next day with the rest of us, this time with ham and various salads.

I always eat too much but by having two Christmas meals, I did doubly so this year. And the eating continued after everyone left on Boxing Day. There were now chocolates to eat; presents from the family.

It was lovely seeing the little ones opening their presents, with Willow opening hers Christmas Day with the rest of us. Despite the Lego, new clothes, cars and other toys, Ryder's favourite was a small packet of chewing gum his mother had bought him. He treasured that, while Kyla and Willow loved their dolls. I have one memory of my paternal grandmother, who died when I was four. We had gone for a visit and she told me there was a present for me in a bag. I looked inside and found two guns and a cupid doll. I grabbed one of the guns. I remember crying because I wasn't allowed to take the gun. I wanted to be the same as my brothers. I did have dolls as a child, but it was really the teddies that I loved. My granddaughters are not like me in that respect, obviously. My daughter, Renee phoned from the Gold Coast. Eva had loved the clothes that I chose. She and I have the same tastes. I talked about that in a previous blog, how I could never buy clothes for Renee that she liked, my mother couldn’t buy for me and Renee couldn’t buy for Eva, yet Eva and I seem to like the same thing.

On Christmas Eve we all headed to the beach in the afternoon before Levi's family left to spend the evening with Rosie's family. And we pretty much repeated all that on Christmas Day.

It was so lovely having everyone home but all too quickly they were gone again.

Jason and Pat will come and stay tonight. They have been up fishing with Jason's father. I am looking forward to that.

But soon, they too will be gone. I will need to think of something to look forward to again. Having everyone coming is a great incentive to getting those tedious jobs around the house done. And I just looked at the resolutions I made at the beginning of this year. One of these was to paint the garage. As we have only managed one side of this, I guess that is something that we will have to do before the weather packs up, incentive or no incentive. But maybe it is time for another trip to the Gold Coast. Now that would be something good to look forward to.