Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Just hanging out by the beach, Christmas Day afternoon 2011

Happy Christmas from New Zealand!  It's been a bit of contrast with Christmas Day last year...

Snowy walk in Roundhay Park, Christmas Day morning 2010

Santa's been here already and he seems on good form this year so we hope you lot on GMT and other time zones have been good!  We started the day at 6.30 this morning with our usual wake up call from the children's bedroom ('It's mooooooorning tiiiiiiime!) and then opened our presents to each other.

Breakfast on the deck.  Santa pays us a visit!

After breakfast we packed a picnic and headed down to the beach at Mission Bay with all the other presents.

Tilly says 'thanks Grandma!' for the till.  

Reuben made friends with a boy within about 30 seconds of us arriving and they played together for hours.  Reuben's new friend and his dad (originally from Turkey, used to play football for Slough Town) shared our lunch and we're going to meet up again in a couple of weeks.  We got back home about an hour ago and the children are now investigating all their presents while we gear up for a BBQ to round off the afternoon.  We spoke to some of Dave's family this morning via Skype from Okehampton Youth Hostel where the clan is gathering for the biennial Christmas do (only 40 there this year, so a small one by Brady standards) and we are really missing the general mayhem and chance to catch up with everyone, but overall we think a summer Christmas has a lot going for it.

Our usual Christmas letter has the year's news, but all our news since we arrived in May is in our earlier blog posts, so here's a brief round up of the year's highlights:

We spent a week in Israel in March, staying with my brother, where the children had fun playing with the Jerusalem cousins and Reuben had a close encounter with a camel:

In April, we went down to Dave's Mum's in Somerset for some time with all the Semple cousins.  This was the month when we both resigned from work and Dave finally completed his medical training, only 18 years after starting and left the ranks of the junior doctors.  I guess you call that thorough!  I've just done my first few days in my new job, working for Auckland District Health Board.  So having escaped DH in the UK I have returned to a similar bureaucratic organisation.  A case of better the devil you know?  All going well so far.  We've starting getting our campervan ready for its first road trip - seat belts installed in the back for the children, just needs a bit of a clean and a new foam mattress for the children's bed.  We're hoping to head off later this week, though the weather forecast suggests we might regret that.  And finally, we have bought a house.  We tried and failed to buy something that had great potential but needed a lot of work and have now bought one that needs virtually nothing doing to it.  Not really our usual style of house - but then old isn't really an option in NZ and if we don't need to be busy with the DIY we'll have more time for exploring and weekends away.  We haven't got any of our own photos, but there's a link to the sale page here.  The current owners are moving to the UK, but not for a few months, and our lease on our rental house doesn't expire until early June, so we're actually renting the house back to them for a few months.  Slightly odd, but suits all of us!

Need to get on with the BBQ and whip some cream for a pavlova.  It's the wrong climate for Christmas pudding!