The obligatory silly season writeup

Mostly for family, as I mentioned in the last post we're usually with one of our families at Christmas time.  This year is a rare occurrence, the last time it happened was almost 6 years ago when I, at the end of gestating Tao, decided flat out that I was not going anywhere.

Firstly, let it be known that we have no Christmas tree (though I am seriously contemplating one of these Fruut trees).  My family, who love their Christmas trees, may or may not be aghast to discover this was the best I could do:

I got them all wrapped two days beforehand when Josh helpfully took all three kids on a deliberately long shopping trip involving getting Tao new Ben-10 sandals and Ruan new (painfully shiny pink) running shoes.  The baby got gypped as per usual.

Christmas day itself, we'd already planned on getting up early and hitting the beach.  Just for once we were running on time with our aim to be out of the house by about 8ish, and the roads were very quiet on the way to Freo.  We were aiming for South Beach and figuring that everyone was going to be in church or watching their kids opening their presents, so it shouldn't be so busy.

Erm, wrong.

South Beach was that packed out that after we saw the overflow parking we turned around and headed for Leighton.  It was also packed but we found a spot relatively easily.  People and dogs were wandering around dressed in Santa hats with "Merry Christmas" embroidered on it.  It was Tali's first beach trip ever and I think he was slightly overwhelmed at the realisation that there were this many dogs and humans in the world.  Also because he is cute and friendly, I'm sure a few people would have had him if I hadn't been watching.  He got a huge fuss made of him.  Training win though, he was extremely easy to recall and walked by me at a pretty good heel or not too far ahead or behind when I took him for a wander, though I wish he would cross behind me rather than in front when he crosses!

I'd resolved not to forget Josh's camera so I could take photos while we were at the beach.  Not sure I would have got many good photos with the crowd that was there, but the point is moot anyway as not only did I forget the camera, I ended up with a toddler on my hip and having to mind a puppy to make sure he didn't get lost in the throng.  I did however manage to get a photo of this cranky pug (or "zombie dog" as the kids would have it) with my phone:

Why so cranky? Owner picked it up and carried it into the water, then brought it back out and plonked it there on the beach.  My phone is terrible, but the look on its face was rather amusing, poor thing.

We didn't stay too long, partially as we hadn't planned on staying too long anyway as it was going to get hot, and mostly because of the insane crowd.  We had been thinking of eating breakfast there but the scrambled egg sandwiches I'd made ended up getting eaten in the back of the car (which now desperately needs a clean, but still hasn't been done).

The kids were excited but waited very patiently while I brought out the boxes to the dining room table to divi up the presents.

Tao was stoked with his remote control helicopter from Nanny and Granddad, and pretty happy with that marble run I won in one of Eco Toys' Christmas competitions (it involved writing a blog post, and I had an awesome one which got eaten in the crash where I was unable to grab backups).  The matching construction set from Nanna and Pop to go with the marble run was also well received.

Ruan also got a tea set which we didn't get a photo of as she took off outside with it shortly after opening it to have a tea party.  It was from Nanna and Pop, and came with wool teabags and wool cupcakes.  Tao got from us a Lego Harry Potter set.

Cub was pretty happy with what he got, the abacus (from us) got a decent rattle before he opened the wooden nesting blocks (from Nanna and Pop, which got rattled a lot and then he discovered they make loud clattering noises if you throw them on the floor, and then that you can put them back together in pretty patterns).  Under the blocks are some new clothes and a popup book from Nanny and Granddad.

Josh got Magic cards from the kids, one booster pack from each.  He spent a while looking through them, I could almost see the decks being assembled in his head, though a lot of information was missing as I haven't had a chance to look at the cards yet.

He'd been saying for years that he wanted to get some decent knives, but we never got around to it due to having other things that always needed to be done. So I got him a really good set of knives.  Made out of Damascus steel the same way as swords good.  He was thrilled.

In typical Josh fashion, silliness ensued.  And people wonder why our kids like playing with knives.

Afterward I spent a good portion of the rest of the day helping Tao assemble Hogwarts:

Think that's detailed? Should see the inside.  I spent a lot less time putting Ru's doll treehouse together:

The evening and a good portion of the night was unfortunately spent attempting to dry my desktop keyboard, migrating my account from desktop to laptop by screen sharing my desktop from the laptop and tweaking the server on my laptop as I was stupid enough to leave a cup of water on my desk while I wandered off to talk to Sprat on the phone and the toddler got to it.

Still, it was a very nice day.  We will be catching up with portions of Josh's family as we can seeing as we missed them on the day itself, plans have already been made it seems.