Happy New Year

Here's wishing you all a happy, healthy, eventful 2008.

Christmas

0010: Santa's little helper delivers modest contents of Esther and Julia's stockings. The children do not stir. Julia will later claim to have heard a loud stomping on the roof.
0600: Esther gets up, visits toilet and is told to get back to bed.
0700: Julia gets up and is told to get back to bed until 7:30 at the absolute earliest. To her credit she returns to bed without making scene.
0715: Julia gets up again. Hops into bed with parents.
0730: Julia gets stocking and begins eating chocolate.
0800: Esther gets up and begins eating chocolate.
0815: Dog throws up. It is not clear how much chocolate it has eaten.
0900: Breakfast. Boiled eggs and toast.
0930: Opening of Christmas presents. I won't bore you with details, but everybody appeared satisfied with their haul. Bear in mind that this is the second-St. Nicholas-themed day of the month and therefore second round of presents.
1015: Julia begins complaining mildly of stomach ache. She is ignored.
1045: Julia throws up stoically in and around the downstairs toilet.
1055: Bread sauce I abandoned for mopping duty burns to bottom of pan.
1115: After shower and hairwash, color returns to Julia's previously palid face.
1200: Cooking continues. Remains of bread sauce are salvaged. They have a not unpleasant (to my mind) charcoaly undertone.
1230: I begin ignoring nagging feeling I may have contracted whatever caused Julia to puke. I start drinking.
1300: Irmie slumps into chair grasping belly.
At this point, the day could have degenerated into a vomitfest, but instead Irmie's family arrived and all went extremely well. Children played without fighting; the dog did not make off with the ham; food was good and wine excellent. Nobody threw up. What more can you ask from a Christmas Day?
As I put Esther to bed, I asked her if she'd enjoyed the day and she said, "Yes, but your bread sauce wasn't as good as usual."
2355: Julia throws up.

Not getting any warmer

Without wanting to belabor the point, it's still pretty damn cold here and the frost on the trees just keeps getting prettier. Today we have blue skies and sun to go along with the ice. We're going skating this afternoon.

Not getting any warmer

It's still cold. Sadly, it doesn't sound like it's going to stay like this until Christmas. Forecasters say it will be back to less cold and much more wet.
It makes your toes shrivel up and your face ache to be outside, but it's just too pretty not to go wander around in this weather. It even snowed a tiny bit this morning allowing Dingo her first taste of the white stuff. She left an odd trail of little paw prints next to big tongue prints all the way down our street.

Cold

It's cold here.
If we hadn't sold our ice skates eight years ago, we'd be strongly considering getting them out of the fat - as the Dutch say. Apparently slapping grease on the blades stops them rusting in the decades between decent cold winters here. You may not be able to see it, but that this black swan that has strayed way too far from Perth actually has ice coating its tail feathers.
This is the park next to our street in all its wintery glory. Sadly, the forecast is for this weather only to last through to Saturday so a white Christmas is not going to happen.