Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

OK, in true typical Anthea style, I am late with the wishes in my title, but I promise they are sincere. I did try to touch base with everyone on FB, but if I missed you....please accept my apologies, I was thinking of you all and I truly wish everyone a wonderful and happy New Year.

I trust that you all had a good one. We certainly did. Mum got this idea in her head that it would be fun to go camping for Christmas and New Years. After some convincing (yes it took a bit with some of us), we all decided that camping would indeed be fun. Camping on New Years is not new, but the whole camping on Christmas Day was a concept that even most of us had some trouble with. Deb, Shane and the girls were unfortuantly not with us this year; but by Christmas Eve at around 5ish, Mum, Dad, Shell, Brian, Dylan and Jake (Brian's nephew) and us Englishs' were all out camping at a place called Burrowey Reserve, ready to see in Christmas.

Now, don't get us wrong, just because we were camping doesn't mean that we missed out on any of the luxuries of a good ol' traditional Christmas, we just did it in true Aussie style. Now I know that there are a lot of Aussies out there who would question whether the word traditional Christmas and camping belong in the same sentance, but for some of my international friends I would imagine it is downright unbelievable, so here for you all to see are some of the photos from our week out.......(Just bear in mind there are a few - I have resized them to make veiwing them a bit easier, but it still might take a little while....sorry!)

No Christmas is complete without a Christmas tree...

One of the mini 'wreaths' that adorned each of our caravans

Christmas Eve, we kept with our Italian tradition of seafood - and boy was it goooooood!

Santa found us....despite one young man not being sure he would....and you can't see here, but the pressies and tree were about the only things not to get wet in the rain the night before - Good old Santa knew just where to sit them.

Tori wondering if there was more in her stocking. Yep - she understood the concept of pressies this year.

Matthew with a boat that Santa bought him, how clever of Santa to know that boat would get lots of use on the river.

The pressies that we got for eachother and the kids. Mmmmm - no! None of us were spoilt.

The Christmas table, complete with home made bon bons (The boys all got fishing tackle in theirs and us girls got a keychain with a supermarket trolley token on them and hair clips & Tori got hair accesories).

Yep - Ray got his turkey and to eat it too.....(in case you are wondering, it had to be cut in half to fit in the camp oven)

The food (salads instead of veggies), and yes there are several bottles of champers on the go.

Us

Mum & Dad

Michelle and Brian.

Dylan with his new toy.

Tori modeling her new bathers and thongs. (And before you ask, Tori did have a hat and rashie vest, but it was very late in the afternoon and very overcast and she was covered in sunscreen.) Oh and she did not wear ear plugs and she did NOT get an ear infection the whole time we were there!

The boys cooling off after Christmas lunch.

Matthew showing of his new t-shirt (& muscles).

Well, thats it for now, hope you enjoyed. For the very observant, you will notice some of these photos are larger than others....this was in no way intentional and by the time I realized my mistake I was not downloading them again.

I hope everyone had as good a Christmas as us....it really was fun; very little mess to clean up, a river to cool off in, everyone got to have a drink without worrying about driving, if anyone wanted a nap they could, the food was great (albiet it be simple) and most importantly we had eachothers company for the whole day!!!!!! Other than the fact that we missed Deb and Shane and the girls and of course, all of Rays family, it really was a perfect Christmas Day. So perfect that we might just do it again next year!

I will post more pics later. Love, hugs and kisses all round....

Anthea

xoxo