A fabulous Christmas

I was so glad I offered to host Christmas Day at our place this year. All the family were invited to come from about 3 pm and stay for a meal. The ladies all brought a contribution towards the meal with them so the menu comprised cold meats (turkey breast, leg ham, cold chicken cuts) and fresh king prawns. We had pasta salad, coleslaw, green salad, pineapple, tomatoes, beetroot slices, asparagus, sweet corn, cocktail onions and bread rolls for main course. Then for dessert... my daughter-in-law made a beautiful warm lemon and raspberry bread and butter pudding and mini cupcakes, my brother's partner made a gingerbread house for the kids and decorated mince pies and my oldest daughter brought the makings of mini pavlovas. I also bought a traditional Christmas pudding and a cake, but we didn't even cut them up on the night, there was so much other good food. So now the fridge is groaning with leftover food and hubby and I are finding it hard not to indulge ourselves a little. We won't mention all the chocolates and other food gifted to us, lucky they all have long use-by dates on the packages LOL. We had 19 adults and 6 children under 4 as well as my yet-to-be-born baby grandson. The day was intermittent cloud and sun, with a pleasant breeze in the afternoon. We assembled our blow up castle/slide in the backyard for the kids and so everyone sat on the ground on doonas or on the outdoor setting with nibbles and drinks watching the kids (including some "Big kids") play on the equipment. The littlies all got on well together with only minor skirmishes now and then. Christmas is such a big thing for the kids, they get over excited and tire quickly but it was a lovely family afternoon. My mother and father-in-law joined us. They are both widowed now and over 80, so they really enjoyed the time with the great grandchildren. It certainly reminded me of the great times I had as a child at my own grandmother's home sitting outside on the lawn with the family at Christmas. Hopefully we'll have many more such happy times in the future. On boxing day we delivered my little grandsons their cubby house gift as promised. Riley (3) helped unpack the box and found the instructions for the men and then didn't stop smiling the whole time he helped assemble the little house.

Riley was very quick to start "screwing together" the fence using only the picture on the box to guide him! Pop and Dad got busy screwing together the main parts of the house while Riley acted as Foreman of the site LOL

Here is the completed house being checked over, Riley couldn't wait to get inside and that big smile made it all worthwhile. Several family members contributed towards the purchase of this much loved cubby house for the boys. PS apologies for the set out of this post, Blogger won't let me put in paragraphs at the moment !!