December is surreal here. It's warming up for Summer time, the days get really long with the sun setting around 21:30 (9:30 pm). End of year sports, work Christmas parties, school plays, parties and field trip start to pile up for the kids. The community pool two blocks away opens and suddenly you think: Oh man! I need to do some Christmas shopping. Partly because of this, and partly because we went on vacation for Christmas, we got each kid one gift and Santa brought them one, plus a stocking. And they were having so much fun camping and hiking and running around with their new friends, they barely noticed that there weren't piles of presents. (Ben did comment that Santa might be angry with him because he didn't get the laptop he asked for.)
But first we had Thanksgiving. In the middle of all the Christmas preparations, we were steaming out-of-season pumpkin in the crockpot for pumpkin pie and buying a "Christmas Turkey" at the grocery. Many Kiwis have remarked to me that they have never tasted turkey. In NZ, I can only rarely find ground turkey meat, and when I do, it costs more than filet mignon. There aren't any turkey sausages, hot dogs, lunch meats, or burgers here. People wonder what it tastes like. But it is for sale at the grocery as a whole turkey in the frozen section around Christmas time for way more than it's worth. For instance, we had a 14 lb bird this year and it was about $85US. Yep.
Popcorn balls came in the mail from Grandma and Grandpa Patterson and the girls liked them but Ben was over the moon with them and claimed most of them as his own. He has completely grown out of trains and is now into the virtual world of Minecraft video games. Here he is as you can find him most days, glued to Erik's laptop.
Here is Tom, roasted up and ready to be eaten. Ben and Maggie were impressed.
We had some American friends, and one honorary American, over for Thanksgiving. Everyone brought a side dish and jolly spirits, both their own and the kind that come in a bottle. Here we are about to enjoy the bird, provided once again by Grandma Sue, whom we toasted at least twice. :)
Maggie couldn't stand all the fun and had to take a wee nap. (Would have been good if she'd been in a Sleeping Beauty costume rather than the Cinderella one, huh?)
Grandma Sue also provided a kids' table tablecloth. Quinn and our kids had fun with that. We used it for several days after Thanksgiving too!
Catherine got an early couple of presents around Thanksgiving. Here she is with her new blouse, cardi, and earrings from Grandma P and Aunt Jill.
Caty and Grace and the older kids at Ben's school were there to watch and cheer on the junior classes for their Christmas show.
It's a public school but they don't stress out about religion here so they sang a couple of hymns before breaking into a few more generic songs like Jingle Bell Rock, etc... Ben was a bit shy about it but I did get this pic.
No uniforms for them, red and green only today. And bare feet. Kiwis love to have bare feet! They call them "Kiwi shoes". You can drive a car, go to the mall, church, the library, post office, doctor's office anywhere! All in bare feet!
Maggie had a Christmas party at her school too but it's all video on the Flip and I'll have to add a link to that later... There was a donkey and a pony to ride and Santa came in a donkey cart to give the kids their gifts!
Caty's class went to a place called
Adrenaline Forest for their end of year field trip. It's a ropes course and they had a lot of fun.
Ben's class end of year party involved a picnic dinner at a local park. You buy fish and chips and bring a bottle of wine and sit around on blankets while the kids play. I can't tell you how cool it is to be able to BYO wine to a school event and walk home afterwards, not worrying about driving! ;)
Mags has gotten really interested in cooking and much better at using spoons and forks. Here she is doing an expert job at eating a kiwi. Doesn't drop a bite.
Maggie has also begun to really want to help in the kitchen. This can slow things down a bit but I usually welcome the help. All the kids will know how to cook for themselves before they move out. Here we are chopping up some organic spinach. We have taken advantage of a service called
Garden City 2.0 where you pay a weekly fee and a grab bag of fresh, locally grown, organic veggies is dropped off at your door. This delivery had a lot of spinach so we had
spanakopita that night.
The day after school let out, we packed up the car (and my new Thule roof box) with our stuff and several key camping items borrowed from Lindsay and Gareth, and drove away for our Kiwi Christmas Vacation.
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