Stuff With Thing

Interesting news article about girls being turned into little princesses.

My MIL Heidi passed away in May 2004.

A few years earlier she had started working on a row by row quilt with her two daughters and one daughter in law.

This year for Christmas each of her children who had not participated in the row by row was given a piece of her quilt that had been finished off by one of her daughters.

Here is the section of quilt Leechboy got, his Mum loved chickens and our daughter Heidi is similarly fascinated by them so it is very cool that we got the rows of chickens.

Eeyore finished this morning:

Christmas Eve dinner at the in-laws went off well. BIL had purchased Souvlaki meat and cooked it on the spit roast. There was far too much food but that is traditional for the in-laws everyone cooks for 25 forgetting that 15 of the participants are children.

Then we got home and Ralph and I experienced another milestone of parenting - staying up late on Christmas Eve assembling the gifts. In this case putting the girls bikes together.

Breakfast (pancakes) at FILs on Christmas morning and then back to our place with FIL and the single BIL to open the girls presents.

Lunch at home with just the four of us was great, followed by a lazy afternoon of doing nothing much.

Didn’t get above 12C here in Greensborough. Was freaking cold.

Annie was thrilled though, every time it hailed she’d point out at the white covered grass and say “see Mummy it does snow in Australia”.

One thing both Ralph and I noticed yesterday was the silence, the almost total absence of noise. We’ve not really been bothered here by traffic noise although with Christmas it has slowly built up to an almost constant rumble. Christmas day was special just for the complete lack of traffic/trucks and all other noise.

Annie in the tie she insisted on wearing to Ralphs work Christmas party.

Heidi after her haircut.

We had very bad smoke haze from the bushfires on the 20th of December. Here are some pictures taken out our front door - you can see the smoke obscuring the view of the shops across the road. Beautiful light conditions though, very golden colour.

Sunset was an orange red colour. I tried to capture it to but our camera isn’t really suited for that kind of photography.

Annie loves helping me vaccum the floor. Crazy child!

Annie and Ralph all set to go out shopping together.

Annie is wearing her Sara jacket, named after a friend of ours with a similar jacket (although in real leather).

Annie drew a picture of Santa on her whiteboard. I was rather impressed with her accuracy.