Christmas, New Year's and the South Island (Part 1)

After all the excitement of xmas parties and frantic holiday shopping, the xmas break was finally here! To kick off the long vacation, we relaxed on Friday (21st) with the Meetin group at a new restaurant/pub on the waterfront. The rest of the weekend was spent (finally) decorating the house for the holidays. 

Some of you will remember that last year we had to make-do with a sad little tree because our container hadn’t yet arrived.

 This year, we added some “Kiwi” touches to the decorations we brought here...we bought a book called “The Kiwi Night Before Christmas”, which included a ‘make your own Bach’! 

On Christmas Eve, we watched all of our old favorite movies - A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (cartoon version), and The Ref. We also 'lit the fire' and hung out our stockings for Santa. 

 

And we found on xmas morning that Santa did indeed show up! We both had heaps of candy in our stockings, and I had a book as well - The Worst Case Scenario (Work). We opened up our gifts from each other and ate our favorite waffles for breakfast.

Later that day, we rode the (free!) bus to Mike and Michele's house for a very yummy dinner and some friendly PlayStation 2 competition. Ok, and a little "Songstar" as well. (My deepest apologies to REM...).

We hurridly packed for our South Island trip and went to bed way later than expected.  Updates and pictures on the trip tomorrow!