Christmas in New Hampshire

I have just received these photos from a good friend in the USA, they have spent a great Christmas with their daughter and her husband and grandchildren in New Hampshire. I honestly do believe that all my american friends actually left the womb with the skills of dressing Christmas trees and baking succulent turkeys (not withered and dried up) already instilled in them. Below is a photo of Mary and Dana's tree this year!

Lois and Glenn at the back of Mary's place - the pond is not quite ready for skating yet!

And walking through the Christmas tree farm which adjoins Mary and Dana's place

The Yachts are finishing

Well it has been a long and slow race this year (slack weather), with the KIWI yacht - "Alfa Romeo" crossing the line first - the skipper says he has the best crew in the world from all over the world consisting mainly of New Zealanders, Australians and Brits, he says that's what got them across first.

The OZ yacht " Wild Oats" came in 2nd (she was hoping for a 5th straight win - but not this year), the BRIT yacht "ICAP Leopard" has just crossed the line, and it looks like the maxi yacht "Loyal" crewed by some top aussie sportsmen is coming in 4th!!!

And for us it has been drizzling over the last few days, the gardens and properties certainly needed the rain. Cousin Susan hitched a ride with another cousin (Cameron - he is staying with his Mum - Auntie Nalda) from Sydney on Saturday, so we are having fun catching up with her and yesterday introduced her to IKEA (out of the rain), today who knows yet, and tomorrow 10 members of the family (5 cousins, 2 aunts and 3 in laws) - are coming across for a light buffet lunch, Ailsa, Sue and Susan are doing salads etc, I'll sort out the quiches and chicken and we are letting the 2 aunts off the hook for cooking this time. Should be great.

Kiwis are leading the troups to Hobart!!

The start of the 65th Sydney to Hobart race - photos shows them sailing past South Head. For years my mother used to invite all the relos over for lunch to watch this part of the race, as her apartment had a view right over to South Head and out to sea. Well the Kiwis have taken the lead on "Alfa Romeo" from our lead yacht "Wild Oates", and in 2nd place is a Pommie yacht " ICAP Leopard" - so who knows what will happen now????.

I love the spinnacker and hull on the yacht below - it is named HOLY COW, also part of the 96 entrants still currently sailing south down the east coast.

And below is LOYAL, 100 ft in length (love it's mainsail) and a crew including some of Oz's top sportsmen, Grant Hackett (1500 meters Gold Medal Swimmer), Phil Waugh (from the Wallabies Rugby Union team), Danny Green (Boxer) and Phil Kearns (another former Rugby player.) just to mention a few! The International entries are strong with 11 yachts from over 100 entries, sailing for Spain, the UK, Netherlands, USA, New Caledonia and New Zealand.

British Armed Forces Descend on OZ for Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race - TODAY

Members of the British Armed Forces have decided to take part in the Sydney to Hobart Race as part of unique inter-service training exercise.

Crews from the Royal Navy, Royal Airforce and the Army (all pictured above), who have been sailing around the world as part of Exercise Transglobe, a year long, in-service military training exercise, will line-up in three Challenger 67ft yachts (owned by the UK Ministry of Defence) for the start of the race today.

Members of the Royal Airforce sail past the Sydney Opera House in preparation for today's action.

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More than 550 personel are taking part in Exercise Transglobe, which is being run in 13 stages and also includes the 2010 Antigua Sailing Race Week. The crews of the three yachts - Challenger of the Hornet (representing the Army), Adventurer of the Hornet

(representing the Royal Navy), and Discoverer of the Hornet (representing the RAF), change at each stage. The Commander in the Royal Navy who is skipper on the "Adventurer" said that the overall aim of the Exercise Transglobe was to get servicemen together, keep them in an active environment and build up the relationship between the three services. Sailing, according to a flight lieutenant in the air force and team captain for the "Discoverer" is the ideal form of training for the servicemen because it takes people out of their comfort zone. He said that some compared life at sea - expecially under racing conditions - to being on patrol in Afganistan. I should think manoevering their way across the Bass Strait to Tasmania will be very testing. We are going to watch the start through Sydney Harbour and out the Heads on the box today. Hope it is a safe race for all.

Christmas day with the Ballards

Up early and started baking - mince tarts and a lime pie to take up to Ailsa and Rod's for lunch. Picked up Auntie Nalda around 9 am and drove north to Wishart - 2 of Ails and Rod's 4 girls were there, Gilly (left) and Brit (right) with their grandmother in the middle. Gilly was on top of the world as her husband Matt, had just given her tickets to Paris for next Christmas, where she and he propose to spend the festivities with her oldest sister - Jo (my goddaughter) - she is based in London. Guess what was really charming is all the little associated extras he put in with the tickets - think Gilly has a very thoughtful Santa/husband there - the opening was accompanied by a few tears of joy from her as well. They left to go to Matt's parents for a late lunch, and we did some toasting, opening of presents, and adding things to the Christmas tree. What was great was to see an ornament I had sent to Jo for her first Christmas (nearly 40 years ago). There were many "union jack" ornaments as well - Jo sends one home every year.

Rod sorts out the wine

and then we sit down to the best Moreton Bay bugs we have ever had - just glorious!

The weather was a tad overcast, the conversation was great, and we were far too full of "eats" to even think about a dunk in the pool. Once we eventually rose from the table to crawl into the car - we dropped Auntie off around 5pm and came home and opened our presents under the tree which were lovely , did not eat another thing and finished off the evening early by watching some of our Christmas holiday DVD's in Salzburg and Paris in 2007. Lovely, lovely day.

Christmas feasts!!

Last night we went to cousin Ash and his wife Sue's place, sat outside under the pepper tree till dusk, and the mozzies started paying visits, then inside to a great dinner. Sue is as dippy about Christmas and ornaments as I am, so I had a great time looking at her large collection of items from all over the place- some charming things there.

Photo: Sue, Ash, and 2nd cousins Maddie, Lachie and Alex.

Lachie hits the table after dinner.

Auntie Nalda and Auntie Beryl outside last night.

We decided to visit a few of the "Christmas Light" houses in the area, yes, they are a bit "gawdy", but some real work has gone into them. This particular one (only showing half of it here) was the winner on the Gold Coast and was packed with people. Guess what was impressive is that this particular display had already raised $9,000 for the Gold Coast Childrens Hospital, and their aim for Christmas Eve is $10,000. Nothing wrong with that!!! Tonight in this same area streets will put little candles in bags and light up street after street - here we are in really warm temperature, yet so much effort is being put into exciting the kids, and a few adults about Christmas.

Santa (in front of the house) was great with the kids And I loved this little "tike", she was trying to stop this Polar Bear from singing his carols - she just kept poking him, she eventually got bored, but all through her torment he rocked, sang and jived his way through!!!!.

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CHRISTMAS EVE MORNING

At 6 a.m, about to head out for a walk, and I get the call, "bring your camera quickly", I obeyed as usual and there right above our house were 2 of the hot air balloons. They were so close we could hear and see the bursts of fire from each one.

AND ON BOXING DAY

The weather changed whilst they were on route, but unfortunately these 17 "Ballooners" had an unfortunate landing after hitting power lines - 4 passengers had some minor injuries.

In the red for Christmas

This seems to be one of the busiest social Christmases we have had for a long time. The week started with having my two aunts over for pre Christmas lunch - the Brig barbequed some superb salmon steaks, we started with prawn cocktails, and finished with Christmas pudding etc. Lovely day, as they are both excellent company. That evening Carol (next door neighbour) called in for a drink and chat. Yesterday we had another couple of neighbours over for nibbles and drinks - lovely couple, he is a Kiwi and Kumeko is Japanese. They left a bottle of wine at the front door with a welcome note a couple of months ago. Had a super few hours with them. Tonight we are heading to another cousin's, Ash and Sue, for a pre Christmas dinner - looking forward to that as they are both great fun, and their 3 teenage kids are a pleasure to have around. Well I must be in the mood for Christmas, it seems that everything I noticed this morning on our walk was definitely RED.

The bouganvillia is brilliant right now.

A young Lorikeet parrot was really enjoying the seed pods on this red tree!.

This flowering gum was in full flower too.

Tree falls in high winds at the Bay.

I have just received this photo from my cousin Nalda who lived behind us at the house in Batemans Bay, it has been taken from her balcony!!! Yesterday the weather was appalling in the 40's with unbelievable winds - Nal said it was the worst they had experienced down there. Anyway at around 7pm (fortunately they were out socialising) the majority of a very large Ironbark Gum came tumbling down on their place and actually missed their house (and Ross's new water feature), and neighbour Doug's and fortunately fell right between the 2 abodes - not sure about Dougie's garden shed, mangling everything in its wake, and actually hitting our clothes line at the back of our old house (the one in this photo). A lot of cleaning up for Nal and Ross, but thank goodness their house is fine and no one was hurt.

We do not miss being surrounded by huge gums and cleaning up their foliage at all, one of the major reasons for selling last May.

In the woods at 6 a.m.

Well, it is warming up on the Gold Coast - (doubt whether friends or family in the Northern Hemisphere have too much sympathy for us though.) It is amazing how much activity there is locally at 6 am. This morning I took the camera for a walk through some of the local woodlands with us.

The Brig leads the way

A group of canines walking their owners!

Love the Gum nuts Rows of Paperbark Gums - main tree around Robina It's also quite dry, this little stream has no flow at present.

Coolangatta Beach Markets

This morning we decided to wander around the Coolangatta Beach markets, we had been told about them by a friend of Susan's who sells his frames and artwork there, it is nearly all local arts and crafts. First off we had to stop and watch the little "nippers" (kiddy lifesavers) in training, they were on every beach we passed. Then it was time to hit the markets - just great, there were also some good food stalls

A little bit of everything for sale

After stretching our legs we drove up to Kirra Point lookout, managed to get a couple of photos before a wedding overlooking the sea took place at 11am.

Coolangatta and Greenmount Beach

And beautiful Kirra Nine Mile Beach

This afternoon we had a great visit from a younger couple we met a couple of years ago camping at Berry Showground, they moved to Alice Springs, love it there, with Darin working for AAT Kings, guiding tours of the outback, and Lisa works for the School of the Air program. Anyway in late September they had their little son (Mikie), he has proven himself to be a real little traveller, they drove from Alice Springs to Rockhampton in 3 days with not only Mikie but their wonderful dog Kahmou, and have been visiting family and friends for the past couple of weeks. Anyway they have picked up their campertrailer and will head back to the Alice straight after Christmas, with Mikie and Kahmou (4 days this time). What a little character Mikie is at 11 weeks, - very calm - he will be a good little camper.!!

The Tree is done!

This week has sort've just zoomed by - quite a few things happening, still some stuff with the house and then of course Christmas is creeping up faaaaast!!!. The tree is up with some lovely new ornaments arriving from England, and then just after I finished it a New Hampshire moose decoration arrived from Bedford N.H., so it also has pride of place on this year's tree.

Wednesday evening we went to the neighbourhood Christmas party at the Colonial Golf Club - very nice indeed, then on Friday evening we had a few neighbours round for drinks and nibbles at 5pm - they left at 11pm. think I overdid the nibbles - no need for anyone to leave for dinner, and one neighbour had made a delicious Christmas mince pie - so we finished that off with ice cream, with some of them consuming a glass each of our next door neighbour - Carol's "1953" Port. I haven't touched port for a couple of decades, but for those that did partake, they all agreed it was superb.

We are still taking an hour walk each morning, and sussing out the different parks and woodlands around. The older part of Robina was originally designed as "1 in 3", that is the original developer left one third of the land clear for woodlands, parks, lakes and the like, and we do benefit from this, always something more to explore. Of course the new developments aren't being afforded this free area, all very squashed.

Bouganvillia hanging over a fence into the woodlands - love this plant, but not to grow myself - far too thorny to handle.

More proof we have downsized!

Well, the plan was to definitely downsize, this we have done, I was reminded again when I had to make the decision to pass on some of our Christmas decorations to one of my cousin's and family, they don't fit in our renovated abode, love passing these little tests! Low maintenance was also a requirement, and the Brig is very happy he has not had to rake one leaf since he has been here, we are settling in very well now!!.

We have actually got back into early morning walks, about an hour each day, this morning we headed to Robina common, plenty of wildlife around, including young Buddy who guards the local newsagency, and then back via the golfcourse and it's glorious poinciana's.

This lizard guy was quite large - lots of them around the lakes

Buddy the "newspaper cocky"

Earlier this week we decided not to drive the 18 hours south in holiday traffic to my Uncle and Aunt's in Bombala for Christmas, just wanted to relax here to be honest, so we will spend Christmas day with my Godmother and her daughter and son in law and family, less than an hour north of here - Ailsa does all cold seafood for Christmas lunch - so that will be great.

A lot is happening around here too, this Wednesday evening is the neighbourhood Xmas party at the Colonial Golf Club around the corner, then another celebration with a few neighbours on the Friday evening, plus more family get togethers pre and post Christmas.

The weather here has been superb, it is time for us to be engulfed with heat and humidity, but so far so good, we do drastically need rain though - things are quite dry - but fortunately we have a water tank for the garden - which still needs some creative charming!.