Christmas Day the Aussie way, by the Barbecue :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! :)  We had such a lovely Christmas here in Australia!  We sure did miss our family, though!  This is definitely one of the harder parts of living so far away-- holidays apart from our family!  We did get to spend lots of time talking via Skype!

Christmas time in Australia is a bit different.  For one, its bloody hot.  It makes all the decorations seem strange... like how could a snow man or icicles possibly survive here-- and since everyone know they can't, why use them as decor?!  Also, they are not very "in-your-face-Christmas" around here...there is only minimal decoration, there are not tons of lights hung up everywhere, they did not have Christmas decor up until mid December (not the day after Halloween!) and they call Christmas presents - Chrissy Pressies :) haha I like that one!  I'm pretty sure, as far as lights go,  we actually won most spirited house on the street... which is sad... I've never seen such pathetic looking lights-- but the competition was weak/ non-existent.  I can't really blame them for not putting up lights, it started feeling a bit silly to me as well, considering it doesn't even get dark until 9pm!  I mean it is summertime here!  The Australians just do Christmas different-- and rather than try to make it feel like what I am used to in America, I'm going to go with it and celebrate the Aussie way!

I recently read a quote from Dannii Minogue (Kylie's sister) (yes, she is a celebrity here) and can really appreciate it now after my first Aussie Christmas!

"Christmas for me smells like suntan lotion and the aromas of a barbecue laden with meat and seafood. It sounds like the slap of Flip Flops on a lazy day with a painstakingly selected Christmas play list humming our favourite festive tunes in the background....

As kids we used to get fake snow and edge the windows with it, which seems very odd now. I have either grown up, or we are moving more and more away from what we see depicted in movies as 'traditional Christmas' images. We sometimes send Christmas cards depicting snowy vistas with red robins and reindeer, but my favorite cards show Santa arriving by surfboard with a sack full of gifts and a pair of sunnies perched on his zinc-creamed nose. "

Christmas time isn't about snow or cold weather at all!!!!  It's about spending time with the ones you love (if you can), giving, caring, and sharing, and obviously, Jesus is the reason for the season :) 

So we started out our festivities on Christmas eve with a dinner of Christmas ham, roasted potatoes, sauteed mushrooms and garlic bread!  It was DELICIOUS!  Brian and I (mainly Brian) glazed the ham and it looked beautiful and tasted amazing-- I wanted to soak everything in the brown sugar glaze sauce so every thing tasted like candy!  We opened a bottle of champagne, sat outside on our back patio listening to Michael Buble's Christmas CD and had a really nice evening!   For some reason they haven't had very many Christmas movies on... which was a little sad to me, because I love christmas movies-- there are sooo many good ones!  So the past couple of nights we had to watch really random movies like "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" (not christmassy at all, but I love Steve Martin!) and "The Lakehouse"...

The next morning we woke up for our first Christmas down under!  The very first thing I did was run to the kitchen and start making the dough for my homemade "Christmas Scones", not to be confused with normal ole everyday biscuits.  I don't like biscuits, I love Christmas Scones.  So no matter how many times Brian tries to tell me that these are the exact same thing and that I must like biscuits, I won't believe him.  You shouldn't either.  They are very different....  

We had them with our homemade kumquat marmalade, from the tree in our backyard!  It was very yummy!  

Then we opened our Chrissy pressies!  

For the future "KING BEER" franchise

Brody loved his pressies too!

 Then we went outside for Brody's BIG gift....
 the ham bone from the night before... it was massive, he couldn't even pick it up!  He stayed outside with his new favorite treat the whole time we talked to the King family and the Peltier family on skype!  We really enjoyed getting to talk to our family-- I can't imagine Christmas morning without it!  We wish we could have been with everyone but we will just be thankful for the amazing technology which allows us to talk from the other side of the world :)

Brodys 1st tram ride!!!

Next we packed up for our BBQ on the beach!  We were meeting friends out there for Christmas day!  It wasn't the best weather and kept trying to rain and finally it did!  But we still made the best of it and BBQed with all the other beach goers in the rain!  We even threw around a football with a bunch of people while it was raining!  They all thought Brian was really good (he is of course, but most of them had never thrown a football before!)  We ate some shrimp (prawn) on the barbie, lamb, sausages, potato salad, veggies etc :)  Then when it was about to start a heavy downpour we left for our friend Sam's (the frenchman from our tassie trip) apartment!  He lives right next to the beach we were at so it was perfect!

Once we got over to Sam's we did a gift exchange where everyone brings a random inexpensive gift and we each draw for one!  I received a nice bottle of wine and a drinking game set and Brian got a compilation of songs made over 10 years and from music from all over the world from Sam who has traveled EVERYWHERE and made this song playlist of all his favorite tunes.  So for the rest of the evening we played games and sang "We wish you a merry Christmas" to everyone who walked by the apt.  (One guy even came in and gave us a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black- so the singing was well worth it!)  and listened to lots and lots of worldly music!  So basically, we had a great time!  It was the most unusual Christmas day I have ever had but I loved every minute of it!  Hopefully next year our family can come have an Aussie Christmas with us!

gift exchange :)

We got home quite late so still had the chance to talk to my family for their Christmas morning!  (Although, we were really really tired and cut it short)

As I was preparing to write this Christmas blog post I found this little number 

Australian Jingle Bells---

Dashing through the bush

in a rusty Holden ute  (Holden=car brand, Ute= utility vehicle or car-truck)

Kicking up the dust, 

Esky in my boot,                 (Esky= cooler, boot= trunk of your car)

Kelpie by my side                (Kelpie = a kind of Australian dog)

singing Christmas songs,

It's summertime and I am in

my singlet, shorts and thongs  (singlet= tank top, thongs= flip flops)

Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way

Christmas in Australia

on a scorching summers day, Hey!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut,

Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden ute

Engine's getting hot, 

we dodge the kangaroos

the swaggie climbs aboard              (swaggie= hitch hiker, hobo)

he is welcome too!

All the family's there,

sitting by the pool,

Christmas day the Aussie way

by the barbecue!

Oh! Jingle bells!  Jingle bells, jingle all the way,

Christmas in Australia

on a scorching summers day, Hey!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut,

Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden ute

YAY!  I hope you liked it!  And the only thing I had to look up myself was swaggie  :)  All the others are terms Ive heard used a lot around here!

Ok, so its "Boxing day" day today... a public/bank holiday which is the day after Christmas.  It is similar to Black Friday after Thanksgiving because it seems the only point to it is to go shopping and all the stores have massive sales!  When I looked it up on wikipedia it say that the reason for the term "boxing" is unclear but there are many theories... ours is:  everyone "boxes" each other at the stores to get the goods!!  Then we decided maybe we should rename Black friday to "Black-eye Friday!"  haha That was really Brians funny joke but I wanted to act like I came up with it!

Also, today is the big Cricket test match- Australia vs India.... what a weird sport where they take up to a week for one game, take breaks for tea and lunch and wear sweater vests for goodness sakes!  :)  Probably not going to be getting into that one!  But it is nice having it on in the background, it sounds really soothing and almost puts me to sleep!  Probably because nothing really goes on and the announcers struggle to come up with things to say so start talking about what each players favorite Christmas meal is (seriously that just happened!)  

Anyways, enough blabbering!  I sincerely hope you had a very Merry Christmas and have a happy new year!!

LOVE YA! :)