We began celebrating on Christmas Eve, all of us feeling slightly weary and in need of rest after our tramp in the Rimutakas.
Despite his tiredness, Jake decided to go for a 2 hour run in the mountains in the morning, while I made a Christmas cake and a cheesecake and prepared all our barbeque food.When he got back we all headed down to the waterfront - which was way quieter than usual, with most things shut for Christmas. The weather was hot and humid, so we slowly strolled around, stopping for coffee and ice cream, watching a stingray in the water and playing by the water fountain before we headed back home to get some respite from the sun.
In honour of my Polish roots we made a decision a long time ago to always eat fish on Xmas Eve. Last year we had fish & chips on the beach and this year we were due to have salmon on the barbeque. Unfortunately due to the complete hectic-ness of our lives recently, the salmon didn't get bought, and we had pork, chicken kebabs, sausages and burgers instead. The thought was there though, and we will eat fish next year!
Meanwhile the five kids stripped off and spent hours on our waterslide, while the adults opened beer after beer / wine after wine to keep cool - so much so that Christmas morning was unfortunately a bit hangovery, ooops.Christmas Day followed the same theme, with temperatures in the 30's again. In fact, according to our local newspaper Wellington hasn't had a Christmas Day this hot since 1934! We had breakfast and presents outside on the deck, the kids were super-excited and squealing, and before long there was wrapping paper everywhere.
After lunch, we decided to head down to the beach to test out Alfie's new present from Molly, a boogie board. So we hopped in the car, cranked up the air conditioning and drove down to Oriental Bay where we found a few Santas kayaking!
We all jumped straight into the water with the Santas - thank goodness for New Zealand's cool sea temperatures! Jake had a bit of a swim, I had a splash and a paddle, Molly made a sandcastle and Alfie thoroughly enjoyed his new toy.
Unfortunately Jake made a bit of a schoolboy error with the sun cream, and forgot to apply it once he took his t-shirt off. Within a couple of hours he closely resembled a giant lobster rather than the Daniel Craig look he was going for (and 2 days later he's still in a lot of pain, so we're being very careful now never to make that mistake again).
On Boxing Day we opened more presents and headed down to the local park for a bit to play rugby and paddle in the stream to keep our feet cool, and luckily it wasn't too long before the rain came and gave us a massive break in the humidity levels.
We headed home for a bit to get ready to go to our friends' house for a Boxing Day lunch, with Molly and Alfie both starting to bicker and show signs of exhaustion. Then all of a sudden it was 4 o'clock and we'd missed the lunch! We'd all fallen asleep for a long afternoon nap. Doh! We're really, really sorry Jerry and Katie...
Seeing as there was no way we were going to get the kids to bed early after such a long nap, we rounded off Christmas by going into the city after dark, to see the Telecom Tree lit up at Waitangi Park. It's usually surrounded by outdoor bean bags so you can sit for a while and watch the changing colours, but due to the rain the beanbags weren't there - and neither were any people! Afterwards we went to Midnight Espresso, one of our favourite little places on Cuba Street for a hot chocolate and a very late night for the kids.
So - all over for another year, but what a great time we had! Merry Christmas everyone - we hope you had a good one too!
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