A jolly holiday

Despite never quite managing to achieve that "Christmas feeling", we've had a very jolly few days.

On the 23rd, I sang in a choir at church in the morning. It had been quite traumatic in the run up as it really felt like everything wasn't going to be ready on time. It was, just. And now I've stopped humming the tunes relentlessly, it almost seems that it was enjoyable.

In the afternoon, Husbink woke up early from his mid-work-nights sleep and we walked up the firebreak in the hills behind our house. It was pretty hard work at points and my legs were shaking by the top but the sense of achievement and the views made it extremely worthwhile. Coming down was a little hair raising in places - I "chose" to sit down a few times!

Christmas Eve was hectic - Husbink sleeping off nights, sorting out chips in the car windscreen (turned out replacement was the best option so we have a shiny new windscreen now, doubt that will last long on NZ roads!), baking, having the owners of our house come round for a look (as they are back from the UK for a week for the first time in about three years...), doing various house jobs and trying to stay awake for a midnight service...

Christmas Day was lovely. Mostly very chilled out (a little unchilled initially as there were just soooo many people at our friends house and all trying to get to different places to see other parts of families and so on...). We ate, we went for a walk, we got very frustrated with various little puzzles, we ate more, we drank a little, we came home and watched my Christmas present from Husbink's sis (the BBC version of Wind in the Willows from last Christmas, it was good). And then we had a Very Big Sleep. Mmmm.

Boxing Day took us by surprise by starting off very sunny - which frankly was not what we wanted. We were really looking for a good excuse to spend the entire day lying on the sofa watching DVDs, munching goodies and so on. Fortunately, after we had forced ourselves out for a little bike ride, the weather turned and we had a miserable afternoon that totally justified watching Harry Potter and eating cake. It was the first Harry Potter which I haven't seen in quite a while and it was fun. Though a lot of the fun was both of us sitting there going "gosh, wasn't book 7 brilliant!" and other such things. It would have been extremely irritating for anyone else to watch with us.

And now, Husbink is back to work and with just two weeks left in the house, I'm full steam ahead sorting and packing and so on. Crazy days.