xmas 09

i walked past these two chaps yesterday.  interesting that two appeared on the same day a few kilometers apart.

bit too tired and rather too hot to do a proper blog post today i’m afraid, but just to say we had a fab time with bignoseduglyguy (above) and family yesterday during our first highly enjoyable kiwi christmas which involved much eating, swimming, drinking and laughing.

there were various excellent quotes from the day but my favourite was the made up answer to our joke creation. 

it helps if you know there’s a road called the ‘desert road’ (one ‘s’) in New Zealand.

i though there must be a joke in there somewhere and got us all to think of good answers to the joke question of “what driving offence could you be arrested for on the dessert road”

there were various great answers, but my favourite was “i was jelly frightened”.  it made no sense at the time either but we laughed til the tears ran down our faces.

we were even able to meet a local celebrity chef !

i hope you all had fab christmases !

we decided to have our traditional christmas roast outside on christmas eve as we’re out with friends doing the ‘kiwi christmas’ BBQ thing tomorrow.  so here are some photos of our day

out with brussel sprouts, in with asparagus.  you always need something people will think is really yucky on the plate.

a new set of cracker jokes.  not sure about websites being ‘trendy’.  who has a website these days ?  it’s all about facebook my friend.

here are jane’s avante-garde mince pies

home made board games (by esther)

the giant santa in downtown auckland, recently received a facelift so it looks less like a child catcher.  it wasn’t a good look previously apparently.

we also had lunch of bangers and mash in a hardware shop.  posh in a down to earth kind of way.  you’ve got to love this country

happy christmas everyone !

for the last few years we’ve put on our warmest coats and gone to the local xmas tree place and cut down our own christmas tree.  but we’ve now moved to new zealand and haven’t been able to locate a cut it yourself xmas tree place.

so instead we went to a local tree place “trees to please” said the sign.  and a man with a permed mullet carried a precut tree to our car.

then we dragged it in to the house and popped it in the corner ready to decorate

here’s some more of our house if you are interested (getting ready for a raclette with friends on sunday evening)

xmas is weird in the southern hemisphere.  it doesn’t get dark until 9pm and it’s very warm.

remember kids – he’s always watching

by the way, here’s the excellent talk from our church on sunday taking a slightly different look at the Christmas story.  worth listening to for our pastor’s kiwi drawl alone !