My first Kritmas with TT. Aaaah.

My first Christmas with TT
In the UK I usually spend Christmas eve at my parents place together with my sister and niece. Niece is only 7 so for the last 6 years she's woken us at the crack of dawn and insisted we all get up immediately to open presents.

This year I was expecting to have more of a leisurely start to the day. I'd completely overlooked the fact that TT is a bigger child than my 7yr old niece. She shook me awake at about 6am and dragged me out of bed.

TT spent way too much on me and got me some v nice aftershave, some books and what she calls a "Jay proof watch" It's a Seiko, it's silver, it's shock proof, water proof, scratch resistant, the works. I'm very impressed.

I got her lots of small gifts because we're saving for our South America trip. These included:
2 frog gnomes
Box set of Black Adder including the two special episodes
David Bowie DVD
Complete works of Jane Austin
Travel stuff
Video camera
chocolates

As always I wrapped everything in such a way to make it unidentifiable.

In case you're wondering why the gnomes, a few days ago TT said that she'd love to collect gnomes. I trawled through Brissy looking for gnomes everywhere. The closest I could find were two large frog gnomes. They are now very happy in our mini rain forest and have been christened Froggy and Froggo. Australians have great imagination when it comes to naming eh?

We also got various gifts from around the world. These included:

- A zippo lighter for me from friends in the UK
- Makeup and girly stuff for TT from friends in the UK
- A stick steven picture from Mr VUBOQ in US
- A bottle of wine from an uncle in South Africa
- Videos and assorted goodies from family in UK
- More travel stuff from some friends here in Aus
- Bottle of wine from Helen in Aus

All in all we done rather well I feel.

I cooked a full english breakfast and then we decided to head up to a place called Mt Coot-tha for our picnic. It's a mountain with wonderful views of the city. We didn't have a coolbox to transport our picnic so I made a load of icepacks by wrapping piles of ice cubes in tin foil and wedged these in between the food that needed chilling.

Our pathetic little hire car really struggled up the mountain. The road isn't all that steep but the car really is shit. 2nd gear all the way because third just led to a steady deceleration even when it was floored.

The picnic was a success even though it was too hot to eat very much and we were still pretty stuffed from breakfast. The rest of the day was spent rather leisurely and after returning we watched a whole series of Black Adder. All in all a rather enjoyable affair.

Seasons greetings y'all.