Peter and Elaine were the first to arrive and were immediately put to work helping spread mulch around the pool. Santa greeted them from atop his blow up tractor (thanks Wim!). The real Santa arrived Christmas Eve on the back of a ute with Mrs Santa and an entourage of elves. Lolly bags all round and lots of Santa hugs. He looked suspiciously like our friend and neighbour Bruce, but that couldn't possibly be. The following morning - Christmas Day dawned wet, wet, wet. Our tenters, James, Shuang and Julia got a little humid but were not complaining. Felix was hosted by Tim and Jenny next door (thanks!) and all the bedrooms were full, with Julian on the study floor.
Peter and Elaine had screen printed T-shirts for everyone, with "Xmas 2013 Diamond Beach" and a lovely little drawing of our butcher birds. The gift giving featured a competition for the dodgiest home made card - I think by general acclaim the award went to the one written on the cut-off top of a beetroot tin. Julia's bon-bons incorporated bad jokes and a "Wanted" poster for everyone to create a portrait of the person sitting next to them, together with what crime and punishment seemed appropriate. My favourite was Peter's portrait of Linda brandishing her fork in a threatening manner, while her crime was "not accepting her place in the pecking order". Thanks to The Gandors for the lovely hamper sent by remote control via Peter and Elaine.
We ate ourselves to a standstill over the course of a long day on prawns, oysters, rice paper rolls, roast chicken, pudding and pavlova together with prodigious amounts of champagne. Lots of silliness. The Balderdash game came out. A table tennis tournament was mounted.
The bronze medal went to Sue and James aka the Stor Stars, the silver to Peter and Julia, Tickytocks and the gold to the Fat Spies, David and Julian. Sorry about the noise, dear neighbours.
Boxing Day at the beach.
James is wearing my wonderful panama hat, my Secret Santa present.
Breakfast for 12 on the terrace
This is one of our largest trees. Look carefully, there is a person high in the uppermost branches.
Nephew James is a tree surgeon by occupation. He generously gave a couple of hours of his athletic, strategic expertise and cleaned up a couple of our most prominent and dangerously dead-limbed trees. It was heart stopping to watch. But he says "It's OK. Its fun"
This is how he starts at the base of the tree.
He makes it look easy, but I bet it isn't.
He secures his ropes near the top of the tree and then moves around and out onto the branches, brandishing his chainsaw with the ropes bearing most of his weight. It looks very complicated.
Everyone relaxed and swam and ate and went on outings. This is the Pacific Palms market. We bought a couple of boxes of apricots and made a huge batch of jam.
And tonight, it is New Year's Eve. We went to Black Head beach for the annual fireworks display. It was really good - very exciting to be so close. Now I must sign off, because David and I have a date with a bottle of champagne in the pool. The last of our visitors left this morning and Marjory has gone to bed, so its skinny dipping time!
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