Having stayed up rather late, or early as the case may be to complete last night’s blog, I had another sleep-in this morning. Being Christmas morning, we organised our usual Christmas breakfast of croissants and champagne… oops a Methode Champenoise, which means sparkling wine made like the French make it, but arguably not as good.
After breakfast the Motel owner came around to all the rooms and gave us Christmas Cake and a bottle of wine. It was great to see a bit of good old fashioned customer service and the bonus for me is that Deb doesn’t even like Christmas cake!
We then walked up to Deb’s brother’s house for the festivities to begin. We had decided that it would be a pretty casual day with different children dropping in at different times, so it was really a case of grazing on various items through the day, ranging from fruit mince muffins to mini pizzas, fruit salad and trifle. After eating considerable amounts of ‘all of the above’,
I made all my phone calls to my family back home and while talking I thought I’d wander about the yard and see if I could find any dangerous creatures. A Praying Mantis was the best I could do.
With all the presents exchanged we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing. There was the usual banter as the All Blacks, Pavlova and Phar lap raise their heads. Of course, for me, my preferred focus is on rugby league, netball, hockey, soccer, ladies 7s and my last (and only) Bledisloe cup game. Of course all these arguments become insignificant when the backyard cricket gets going properly for the big (backyard) Boxing day game tomorrow.
The pitch looks a touch rough on account of the drought in the Manawatu…. or so I thought. Apparently Feilding is not yet drought declared as there are significant bore water reserves in the area.
We walked back to our motel, having eaten our fill and having a great day with the family. We are hoping the forecast rain won’t eventuate tomorrow, but one cannot control the weather. I’ll leave you with one more backyard picture (that strangely enough involves wine.
Until tomorrow!
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