Christmas day!

Christmas eve preparations began early for us. The kids had woken up nice and early that morning (thanks summer and barking dogs) so it was still light outside when we started preparing for Santa's arrival. We left a glass of milk and a homemade "gin gin" (as Noah likes to call them) cookie for Santa, and a carrot for the reindeer- to all share amongst them I guess.

As the kids settled to bed miraculuosly with no hesitation nice and early after reading "The night before Christmas," Santa and his elves got to work assembling the massive trampoline he got the kids and wraping all their pressies...

No, they are not wedding gifts under the christmas tree. It was the only Christmas wrapping paper left that  "Santa" could find at the last  minute in Emerald. Note to self: do not even leave wrapping paper purchasing to the last minute in Emerald.

When morning broke, and Joe had fixed the internet cable for the 3rd time (thanks dogs), we skyped granny and pop and the kids excitedly headed off to the living room to see what Santa had left behind...

Lots of PRESENTS!!!!

After opening presents we enjoyed a pancake breakfast of course...

at our christmas table, which I would like to thank 'Crazy Clarks' on behalf of all the last minute preparation people with a small budget- me. 

 And we enjoyed our simple yet tasty (if I do say so myself) Christmas lunch of glazed ham, prawns and salads, which of course meant nothing to the kids. They much preferred the bread rolls... only.

Yes, we ate ham for a whole week straight. It's a good thing we love it around here.

Then the rest of the day pretty much consisted of this...

We missed our families, and though the day was a lot less quiet and uneventful, it was just right (for an almost 38 week pregnant me anyway). We loved and enjoyed our first little family Christmas and it'll be one to remember- especially now that i've finally blogged about it and posted photos of all the fun moments, such as this little beauty...

Gingerbread house

This was the first christmas that we've spent alone, just us, our little immediate family. Joe and I wanted to make it as special as we could, and start some new family christmas traditions. One of them was to make our very first gingerbread house and cookies.

We decided to make Joe in charge (considering he's the chippie around here), and let him design, build, bake and assign the kids to decorate. I made the dough... ok,  I got the ingredients out and Joe pretty much did the rest of the preparation for the dough. I took the photos!

Ta daaaa!!! The beautiful end result...

How they got the end results and our little sugar addict Noah eating all the decorations...

Making cookies with the left over dough was just as fun and tasty!

It was such  fun and tasty christmas eve activity that Joe... oops, I mean WE all enjoyed! Definitely will be holding on to this tasty little tradition.

The lead up to christmas!

I think Elly started asking me "is it Christmas soon?" since about the middle of the year. She was so excited for Christmas this year mainly for the following reasons...

1. She could remember how many pressies she got  last year!

2. She knew that we WERE going to spend Christmas in Adelaide with Granny, Pop and the rest of the family and...

3. It probably didn't help that I started too early this year using "Santa" as my bribe(I have his direct number ;) to help get me  through my bad morning sickness earlier in the year (desperate times, call for desperate measures).

So luckily I found the cute advent calendar that granny gave us one christmas to begin counting down the days first thing every morning...

We also took our annual Santa photo. Can you tell how excited El was to take a pic with Santa?! Noah, not so much. But it is a big improvement from last years. Last christmas Noah completely freaked out and refused to have his pic taken. I'm thinking by photo no. 3 next year, we should have the annual Santa pic perfected.

Then the whole week leading up to Christmas, I had little reindeers popping up randomly around the place (thanks to Santa's gift they got for taking a pic with them). This is when it sure began to look a lot like christmas! 

I LOVE the christmas season!